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Environmental Cost Disclosure and Pricing of Consumer Goods: A Conceptual and Empirical Review
Subject area: Management and Commerce · Area of research: Sustainability Reporting
DOI: 10.64388/IREV10I4-1724186
Abstract
Firms in Nigeria’s consumer goods sector now carry environmental costs that barely featured in their cost structures two decades ago, yet little is known about whether these costs end up in the prices households pay. This paper brings together the concepts, theories and empirical evidence on that question. Environmental accounting is treated as having four strands: environmental cost disclosure, pollution control expenditure, waste management costs and sustainability reporting. Stakeholder theory serves as the main lens, supported by legitimacy, institutional, contingency and resource-based perspectives. Twenty-two published empirical studies, mostly Nigerian and dated 2019 to 2025, are reviewed. They link environmental costs and disclosures mainly to profitability, earnings and firm value, and their results point in different directions depending on the sector, the cost category and the performance measure used. None measures product prices directly. Survey evidence from 213 staff of consumer goods manufacturers in Lagos State is then presented to fill part of this gap. Regression estimates show that pollution control expenditure (β = 0.312), waste management costs (β = 0.276), environmental cost disclosure (β = 0.198) and sustainability reporting (β = 0.164) all relate positively and significantly to pricing, and together account for 67.2% of its variation. The paper concludes that, in the view of those who set them, consumer goods prices in Lagos absorb a substantial part of firms’ environmental costs. It calls for uniform disclosure rules, tax relief for cleaner technology, and price-based studies across other states and sectors.
Keywords
environmental accounting; environmental cost disclosure; pollution control expenditure; waste management costs; consumer goods pricing
How to cite this paper
@article{1724186,
author = {Adegoke Bolaji Paul, Adedipe, Oluwaseyi Ayodele},
title = {Environmental Cost Disclosure and Pricing of Consumer Goods: A Conceptual and Empirical Review},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2026},
volume = {10},
number = {4},
pages = {2968-2979},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1724186.pdf},
abstract = {Firms in Nigeria’s consumer goods sector now carry environmental costs that barely featured in their cost structures two decades ago, yet little is known about whether these costs end up in the prices households pay. This paper brings together the concepts, theories and empirical evidence on that question. Environmental accounting is treated as having four strands: environmental cost disclosure, pollution control expenditure, waste management costs and sustainability reporting. Stakeholder theory serves as the main lens, supported by legitimacy, institutional, contingency and resource-based perspectives. Twenty-two published empirical studies, mostly Nigerian and dated 2019 to 2025, are reviewed. They link environmental costs and disclosures mainly to profitability, earnings and firm value, and their results point in different directions depending on the sector, the cost category and the performance measure used. None measures product prices directly. Survey evidence from 213 staff of consumer goods manufacturers in Lagos State is then presented to fill part of this gap. Regression estimates show that pollution control expenditure (β = 0.312), waste management costs (β = 0.276), environmental cost disclosure (β = 0.198) and sustainability reporting (β = 0.164) all relate positively and significantly to pricing, and together account for 67.2% of its variation. The paper concludes that, in the view of those who set them, consumer goods prices in Lagos absorb a substantial part of firms’ environmental costs. It calls for uniform disclosure rules, tax relief for cleaner technology, and price-based studies across other states and sectors.},
keywords = {environmental accounting; environmental cost disclosure; pollution control expenditure; waste management costs; consumer goods pricing},
month = {October},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV10I4-1724186}
}