**3. Literature review and development of hypotheses**

The previous studies investigating the extent of corporate voluntary reporting practices are of the view that environmental reporting is a significant phenomenon employed by corporations and is influenced by many corporate governance and firm specific attributes. The present review is an endeavor to encircle the multiple determinants of environmental reporting and its relationship with corporate governance characteristics. Corporate governance characteristics are manifested and categorized into: (1) board characteristics namely the size of board, board composition, role duality and proportion of female directors; (2) board committee's characteristics computed by audit committee independence and (3) ownership structure computed by the percentage of institutional investors. Control variables employed in the present study are size of the firm, leverage and profitability. In the sub-sections below, we develop hypotheses relevant for CG characteristics.
