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How to make sense of boilerplate language in CSR reports?
Dalarna University, School of Information and Engineering.
2025 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports are a key communication tool through which organizations disclose their sustainability efforts and principles. However, the lack of regulation in these reports often leads to the use of boilerplate language, potentially resulting in greenwashing. This thesis examines the ability to classify sustainability disclosures as substantive or symbolic using Natural Language Processing (NLP). By employing Stanza, the research replicates and extends previous work done by Huq and Carling (2024). It expands the scope from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the entire ESG spectrum. The methodology leverages dependency parsing as the core technique involved in the classification algorithm. Findings reveal significant trends in regional, organizational, and sustainability area specific substantive disclosure ratios. Despite the relatively high accuracy of classification algorithm, limitations persist in handling complex sentence structures and variability in linguistic patterns. These insights contribute to the understanding of CSR communication quality, highlighting the need for enhanced reporting frameworks and tools to detect greenwashing.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025.
Keywords [en]
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Stanza, Dependency Parsing, Data Extraction, Text Analysis
National Category
General Language Studies and Linguistics Algorithms
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:du-50130OAI: oai:DiVA.org:du-50130DiVA, id: diva2:1934990
Subject / course
Microdata Analysis
Available from: 2025-02-05 Created: 2025-02-05 Last updated: 2025-10-09

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General Language Studies and LinguisticsAlgorithms

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • chicago-author-date
  • chicago-note-bibliography
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf