Environmental and social disclosures dataset for Malaysian public listed companies

This article presents a comprehensive dataset extracted from published annual, sustainability and integrated reports, focusing on environmental (GRI300) and social (GRI400) disclosures, for the top 100 Malaysian public listed companies (based on Market Capitalization as of 31 December 2016). The dataset covers three years (2018 to 2020) with 300 firm-year observations. Environmental and Social disclosure scores were calculated using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework and derived from the content analysis of the companies' reports accessed from respective corporate or Bursa Malaysia's websites. A binary scoring method (one for disclosure or zero, otherwise for each environmental and social disclosure item) was employed. This scoring process underwent three stages of rigorous manual verification protocol: initial check and scoring by research assistants, review by the research team, and a final review by an independent external accounting firm for validation. This dataset is valuable for academics, practitioners, and policymakers to evaluate corporate alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #12, encouraging Responsible Consumption and Production, and shape strategic policies to meet Bursa compliance for enhanced corporate sustainability. It further aids in investigating associations between governance factors and other firm characteristics with environmental and social disclosures.


a b s t r a c t
This article presents a comprehensive dataset extracted from published annual, sustainability and integrated reports, focusing on environmental (GRI300) and social (GRI400) disclosures, for the top 100 Malaysian public listed companies (based on Market Capitalization as of 31 December 2016). The dataset covers three years (2018 to 2020) with 300 firmyear observations. Environmental and Social disclosure scores were calculated using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework and derived from the content analysis of the companies' reports accessed from respective corporate or Bursa Malaysia's websites. A binary scoring method (one for disclosure or zero, otherwise for each environmental and social disclosure item) was employed. This scoring process underwent three stages of rigorous manual verification protocol: initial check and scoring by research assistants, review by the research team, and a final review by an independent external accounting firm for validation. This dataset is valuable for academics, practitioners, and policymakers to evaluate corporate alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #12, encouraging Responsible Consumption and Production, and shape strategic policies to meet Bursa compliance for enhanced corporate sustainability. It further aids in investigating associations between governance factors and other firm characteristics with environmental and social disclosures.

Value of the Data
• Sustainability reporting has become a critical aspect of corporate responsibility globally, satisfying the increasing demands of conscious consumers, discerning investors, and stringent regulations. Companies are recognizing the significance of demonstrating and effectively communicating their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices to their stakeholders. In Malaysia, the trend of sustainability reporting has notably grown, largely driven by initiatives from Bursa Malaysia requiring listed companies to disclose their sustainability activities in annual reports. • A key determinant of a company's perceived commitment to sustainable practices is the quality of its sustainability reporting. One widely-accepted benchmark for assessing this quality is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, providing a thorough framework for sustainability reporting. This article, therefore, aims to deliver a dataset on the environmental and social disclosure scores of the top 100 Malaysian listed companies. It highlights environmental and social metrics per GRI300 and GRI400 standards to underscore areas of primary focus in sustainability reporting. The dataset does not capture the governance aspect as most companies already meet disclosure requirements of Bursa Listing requirements on this aspect given that the Bursa Malaysia listing requirements mandate key elements of the Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance from early 2001 until the present. • This dataset's significance extends to various sectors. It offers a robust measure of the environmental and social practices of Malaysian companies, thus providing insightful observations for researchers, policy-makers, and related stakeholders. It can inform better decisionmaking around sustainability initiatives and regulations. Moreover, academics can leverage this dataset for constructing a sustainability reporting index for firms' sustainability performance assessments. Additionally, the association between environmental and social disclosure and firm value could be empirically investigated using this data, serving as a valuable resource for future research. • Currently, the availability of a comprehensive dataset for Malaysian companies is limited [2] .

Objective
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns play an increasingly important role in investment decisions [ 3 ] as well as in shaping firms' market value [4] .
However, the availability of consistent reliable ESG data is limited and poses a challenge to owners, policymakers, academics, asset managers and other stakeholders who want to assess ESG performance [5] . Arguably, there is a lack of a common framework for creating ESG ratings resulting in substantial disparities exist across data vendors in their ESG ratings for the same company. Such disparities in ESG ratings make assessments of companies' ESG performance difficult and further challenge investigations of ESG investing's impact on investment performance.
In light of Bursa Malaysia's Sustainability Framework initiated in October 2015, the practice of sustainability reporting (SR) has seen increased prominence in Malaysia. Companies are encouraged to demonstrate responsible environmental and social stewardship through disclosure in their annual, sustainability and integrated reports. To address the shortcomings in ESG data mentioned above, this dataset provides environmental and social scores for Malaysia that are derived from a consistent framework.
Thus, this article presents a dataset initially generated from environmental and social disclosure aspects. The ultimate objective of this data article is to explore and deepen our understanding of how firms strategize their performance towards sustainable practices especially related to environmental and social aspects.

Data Description
The data were collected from the top 100 Malaysian companies, as demonstrated in Table 1 , totalling 300 firm-year observations from 2018 to 2020. Observations were based on the companies' disclosures pertaining to environmental and social aspects, primarily extracted from their annual financial statements, sustainability reports, and integrated reports. These documents were publicly available on the websites of Bursa Malaysia or the companies themselves. This project's content analysis allows for a detailed and systematic examination of sustainability disclosures, providing an empirical foundation for the assessment of sustainability strategies across various industries.    Non      Table 2 shows the environmental and social mean scores among companies in Malaysia according to 13 industries, i.e., energy, financial services, health care, industrial products and services, plantation, telecommunication and media, transportation and logistics, real estate, construction, consumer products and services, property, technology, and utilities. This table shows the performance of social and environmental measures. The data provided in this article were constructed to understand the variations in measures among huge corporations. The same data based on Table 2 has been used and shown as illustrated in Chart 1 . The chart depicts the firm's involvement in implementing sustainability from a social and environmental standpoint. This graphic shows that the plantation and technology industries are actively involved in this measurement whilst the property sector has a low degree of implementation of this sustainability approach.
The raw data for environmental and social disclosures are available in the data file called ' Table C_Environmental and Social Score' in the Mendeley repository. The formula to calculate the environmental and social disclosure scores, along with the definition of the environmental and social themes, can be found in the data files called '

Experimental Design, Materials and Methods
This research employed a quantitative content analysis methodology, primarily analyzing annual, sustainability, and integrated reports of listed companies, accessible from their corporate websites or the website of Bursa Malaysia. Our sample comprised the top 100 Malaysian PLCs based on 2016 market capitalization, resulting in 300 firm-year observations from 2018 to 2020. We selected these companies because an amendment to Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad's main market listing requirements regarding non-financial information disclosure was made in 2016 Chart 1. Industry environmental and social performance. [6] . The amended listing requirements requested all Malaysian firms listed on the main market of Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad with a market capitalization of RM2 billion and above as at 31 December 2016 to disclose sustainability-related information in their annual report for the year ending on 31 December 2016 [7] . We chose to start the project in 2018 because the transition to GRI Standards was completed on July 1, 2018, replacing G4 guidelines. The GRI Standards provide a global best practice for reporting economic, environmental, and social impacts, and G4 guidelines are no longer supported [8] . Analyzing and evaluating the level of disclosure of environmental and social-related information under the GRI Standards of the top 100 Malaysian firms based on their 2016 market capitalization provides insights into leading companies' sustainability reporting practices and offers implications for others in the business landscape. Conducting a sector-wide analysis allowed us to identify common disclosure trends across industries.
Following the GRI standards, we meticulously examined each accessible report, specifically seeking data relevant to sustainability. We employed a binary scoring system, assigning a "1'' if a company demonstrated a particular sustainability attribute or a "0'' if otherwise. The scores for each metric within the GRI categories (GRI301-GRI308 and GRI401-GRI419) were then summed up, with the aggregate score categorized by industry. To calculate average scores, the total scores for each industry were divided by the number of observations within that industry sector.
This content analysis process consisted of three phases. The first phase involved research assistants identifying sustainability-related information, providing screenshots for verification, and assigning preliminary scores. The research team then reviewed these scores in the second phase to ensure they met the defined criteria. In the final phase, an independent, professional accounting firm assessed and validated the environmental and social scores obtained from content analysis, providing an assurance of the score's consistency and authenticity based on their expertise. Fig. 1 shows the overall flow of data collection and methodology process. Chart 2 presents the environmental and social score structure. There are 8 themes (GRI301 to GRI308) in the environmental score (GRI300) structure, which encompasses 101 metrics and 19 themes (GRI401 to GRI419) in the social score (GRI400) structure, which encompasses 90 metrics. The metric scores are rolled up into environmental and social theme scores and subsequently into the environmental and social dimension scores. Ethics were meticulously considered throughout this research project. We ensured to comply with all platform-specific regulations and ethical guidelines, confirming the data's integrity and confidentiality.

Ethics Statements
Throughout the data collection process, the authors adhered to all ethical considerations. The data used in this paper is not primary data, it is secondary data which is publicly available information from published reports. Therefore, the authors do not need to seek permission to use the secondary data. The authors also did not conduct human or animal experiments.

Limitations
Not applicable.

Data Availability
Environmental

Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.