An Examination of Worldwide Assured Sustainability Reporting

This paper examines a sample of 130 entities worldwide which issued assured sustainability reports between 2002 and 2004. We investigate which countries and industries are more likely to have an assurance statement, what levels of assurance are provided, and what factors affect the level of assurance provided. In particular we investigate the association between the type of assurance provider (big 4 and non-big 4)1 and the nature of the assurance service provided. Descriptive statistics show that more than half of the assured sustainability reports were issued in the european union and that non-big 4 firms assured more than 60% of the reports.