Too close to nature? How spatial exposure to national nature reserves affects biodiversity disclosure

Existing research on corporate biodiversity disclosure has paid limited attention to firms’ spatial exposure to national nature reserves and has insufficiently distinguished between disclosure quantity and disclosure quality. By integrating institutional theory, stakeholder theory, and insights from spatial economics, this study examines how spatial exposure to national nature reserves affects the quantity and quality of corporate biodiversity disclosure. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2015 to 2023, the results show that spatial exposure is associated with higher biodiversity disclosure quantity but lower biodiversity disclosure quality. Further analyses indicate that government environmental regulation and executives’ environmental background strengthen the positive association between spatial exposure and disclosure quantity, while weakening its negative association with disclosure quality. By introducing spatial exposure into the study of corporate biodiversity disclosure, this study highlights an overlooked spatial source of biodiversity legitimacy pressure and explains how such pressure generates differentiated disclosure responses.