Digital transformation and corporate accountability: biodiversity disclosure via social media in the food sector

Purpose The digital transformation has profoundly reshaped corporate disclosure practices, offering new opportunities for real-time, interactive, and stakeholder-oriented communication. Within this context, this study adopts legitimacy theory to examine how extensively food companies disclose biodiversity-related information on social media – specifically on X – and investigates how firm-level financial characteristics influence this disclosure. Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 126 publicly listed food companies with verified X accounts. A dictionary-based content analysis is employed to measure the level of biodiversity disclosure (BD) via X, and an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression is performed to examine the influence of firm-level financial characteristics on BD practices. Findings The results show that firm size and profitability are positively associated with BD via X, while financial leverage has no significant effect. These findings support the idea that larger and more profitable firms are more likely to engage in BD via social media as a strategic response to legitimacy pressures. Originality/value This study contributes to the emerging intersection between digital transformation and corporate accountability by investigating BD through social media, a largely overlooked channel in the academic literature. By focusing on the food sector – an industry with significant biodiversity impacts – and analyzing the financial drivers of BD, this study offers new insights into how companies strategically leverage digital platforms to disseminate biodiversity-related information and manage legitimacy in an increasingly dynamic communicative environment.