AI helps reveal what sustainability issues companies emphasize
Every loaf of bread has a carbon footprint, a supply chain and a workforce behind it. As climate change, food safety and labor rights attract growing attention, corporate disclosures on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are becoming increasingly important. But what do companies disclose, and have their priorities changed?
A team from Kyushu University in Japan developed an AI-based method to analyze how corporate disclosures on sustainability issues align with the topics that matter most to each industry financially. Applying this method to Japan's food and beverage sector, the researchers found that companies tend to emphasize social issues, such as product quality and customer welfare, over environmental matters like water and energy management and governance issues like supply chain management.
The study, published in Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management on September 16, 2026, also revealed that disclosure priorities shifted after 2022, with greenhouse gas emissions disclosures increasing notably, particularly among companies listed on Japan's Prime Market. This trend coincided with new climate reporting requirements aligned with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework for Prime Market-listed companies.
The AI model used, called Text Match Pre-Trained Transformer (TMPT), captures concepts expressed in different ways, allowing for a more nuanced comparison of disclosures across companies, years, and ESG issues. The researchers believe that clear industry-specific disclosure requirements can influence which ESG issues companies prioritize, and that this framework could be applied to other industries and countries.
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