Comparing digital sustainability reporting through the EU and US perspectives

In recent years, the evolution of sustainability reporting represents an issue that involves an increasing number of companies, even on a voluntary basis, in order to provide a number of information to stakeholders (Pizzi et al., 2022). In this perspective, the international scenario has been characterised by several different regulations, aiming to coordinate and standardise information and provide a uniform path of obligations for companies to comply with. European Commission has also played a significant role at the international level by regulating sustainability information compulsorily (Jackson et al., 2020; Lombardi, 2021). On the other hand, the necessity to provide the stakeholder with sustainability reporting information should be matched with the need to standardise sustainability information that identifies and qualifies the companies operating in the national and multinational market. From this standpoint, scholars observed that the shift from Directive 2014/95/EU (NFRD) to Directive 2022/2464/EU (CSRD) will have a positive effect on the overall stage of standardization of sustainability reporting in Europe (Baumüller & Sopp, 2022; Lombardi, 2021). In this regard, the development of new reporting tools will support companies to fill the information gap represented by the lack of comparability and reliability identified by researchers and policymakers and gain economic benefit (Leitner-Hanetseder & Lehner, 2022). This research contributes to the current discussion about this topic as there are few studies analysing the relevance of sustainability reporting practices through digital transformation (Lombardi & Secundo, 2021; Schmitz & Leoni, 2019). This chapter aims to propose the state of the art in digital reporting after the introduction of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the US regulation in the ESG report.