A decade of environmental accounting reporting: What we know? Carlos Mata a, * , Ana Fialho b , Teresa Eug  enio c a School of Business and Administration, Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal, CICE-IPS e Centre for Research in Business Sciences, Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal, Portugal b School of Social Sciences, University of  Evora, CEFAGE - Center for Advanced Studies in Management and Economics, Portugal c School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, CARME - Centre of Applied Research in Management and Economics, Portugal article info Article history: Received 29 December 2017 Received in revised form 27 June 2018 Accepted 9 July 2018 Available online 12 July 2018 Keywords: Social and environmental accounting Environmental report Accounting journals abstract This study presents a literature review of environmental reports based on papers published in 20 ac- counting journals between 2006 and 2015. A majority of the papers were published in journals, such as Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Accounting Forum, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, and Accounting, Organizations and Society. For each article, the aims and results obtained, methodol- ogies adopted, data sources, industrial sectors, and countries involved were identified. Most of the studies present a longitudinal approach and use content analysis as their methodology. The most extensively used theories are the legitimacy and stakeholders theories. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the reflection of the state of the art of research in social and environmental accounting. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Environmental information since the mid-1980s of the last century has been a matter of growing interest of firms, academic communities, accounting regulatory bodies, and professional as- sociations among others. This growing interest, owing to its social and environmental issues, has resulted in the increment of aca- demic publications, which have adopted different perspectives with most of the research focusing on the analysis of social and environmental reports (SER) and in search of the theoretical statements that justify these practices. Previously, studies made in this field used only a few accounting journals as sources, the present one has analysed papers published in 20 leading accounting journals, similar to Parker (2005), Eug enio et al. (2010), Mata et al. (2015) and Deegan (2017) between 2006 and 2015, this study aims to contribute to the review of the pub- lished studies, thus allowing a knowledge of the state of the art of research in accounting on the issue of environmental reporting. The analysis intended to identify the following dimensions for each article: methodologies adopted, data sources, industrial sector, and the countries involved in the research, aims and results obtained, practices and motivations for the environmental report, relationship between the environmental report and organizational development and theoretical bases. This work is structured in the following manner: it begins with the introduction of an historical perspective of research on social and environmental accounting (SEA), followed by the explicit methodology adopted for the sample screening. The next section shows the results, and its systemisation and discussion. Finally, we present the conclusions and limitations. 2. Historical perspective of social and environmental accounting The growing interest of social and environmental issues pro- pelled the increment of academic publications. In this regard, the literature on SEA is vast and develops several lines of research not only in a theoretical, but also in an empirical perspective, on the study of SER and SEA practices from both internal and external viewpoints. Several authors present a systemisation of the theoretical and empiric research on SER and SEA, and can be highlighted in Mathews (1997, 2003, 2004), Gray (2002), Owen (2008), Parker (2005, 2011), Eug enio et al. (2010), and Deegan (2017). Mathews (1997) classified the main topics addressed in the literature in the last 25 years, dividing them into three distinct periods: from 1971 to 1980, 1981 to 1990, and 1991 to 1995. Gray (2002) presented a critical analysis of the literature in SEA published in the last 25 years, highlighting the studies published in the Accounting, Organization and Society (AOS) journal. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: carlos.mata@esce.ips.pt (C. Mata). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.07.087 0959-6526/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Cleaner Production 198 (2018) 1198e1209