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Introduction
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure obligations for companies are rapidly increasing around the world. Investors are becoming increasingly aware of both company financial statements and ESG reports. In this sense, ESG reporting reflects management strength and engenders investor confidence in the long-term prospects of the company. However, there are several challenges along with the ESG reporting process: data authenticity in report preparation, data consistency in report writing, and data transparency in report publication.
The ESG agenda is moving forward together with increasing scrutiny on the quality of ESG information disclosed by businesses. Companies put in place necessary systems, processes, and controls to manage ESG data that not only facilitates performance monitoring, but also supports external assurance. Similarly, the primary challenge with respect to ESG assurance is the credibility and reliability of ESG data.
Digital technologies have the potential to deal with the aforementioned challenges and therefore offer unprecedented opportunities for combating the ESG greenwashing behaviors. Furthermore, as the digital technologies continue to evolve, there is an increasing need for theoretical foundation, new methodologies and approaches, and empirical evidence to support the development and applications.
The aim of this special issue is to explore the transformative impact of digital technologies and attract top-quality research on the methodology development and applications of digital technologies, and novel data analytics in practice and research within the field of ESG reporting and assurance. Both theoretical and empirical work is welcome, and studies developing new methods for modelling, mechanism design, optimization, inference and prediction, empirical studies, and interdisciplinary research are encouraged.
List of Topic Areas
- AI-empowered ESG data authenticity
- Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) in ESG reporting
- Blockchain-enabled ESG data sharing
- Digital asset models for ESG data
- ESG data security; ESG data trading mechanism design
- Federated learning for ESG assurance
- Impact of digital transformation on anti-greenwashing
- Incentive mechanism design for the use of digital technologies
- IoT-enabled ESG data collection
- Knowledge graph of ESG data
- Large Language Models (LLMs) for ESG assurance
- Smart ESG data analytics
Submission Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here:
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see:
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Dates
Opening date for manuscript submissions: 15 December 2025
Closing date for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026
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