Despite the prevalence of photographs in corporate sustainability reporting, their use is not yet sufficiently understood. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first large‐scale study in the field. Introducing a novel machine‐supported approach, we assess environmental photograph utilization based on a sample of 45,228 photographs contained in 1,463 separately disclosed sustainability reports from European firms between 2011 and 2020. We find that against the overall trend of decreasing photograph utilization, the share of environmentally themed photographs has markedly increased. Furthermore, operating in an environmentally sensitive industry is strongly associated with a substantially larger share of photographs depicting environmental subject matter. Lastly, we observe that companies signal their superior environmental performance through greater utilization of environmental photographs. By introducing a novel machine‐supported approach to analyzing photographs, this study makes a methodological contribution to the field of sustainability reporting. Our results also have important practical implications.

中文翻译：

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企业可持续发展报告中的环境照片使用：机器支持的视觉内容分析


尽管照片在企业可持续发展报告中很普遍，但其使用尚未得到充分理解。据我们所知，这篇论文是该领域的第一次大规模研究。引入一种新的机器支持方法，我们根据 2011 年至 2020 年间欧洲公司单独披露的 1,463 份可持续发展报告中包含的 45,228 张照片样本评估了环境照片的使用情况。我们发现，与照片利用率下降的总体趋势相反，以环境为主题的照片的份额显着增加。此外，在环境敏感的行业中运营与描绘环境主题的照片份额要大得多密切相关。最后，我们观察到，公司通过更多地利用环境照片来表明其卓越的环境绩效。通过引入一种新颖的机器支持方法来分析照片，本研究为可持续发展报告领域做出了方法论贡献。我们的结果也具有重要的实际意义。