Diagnosing ESG Disclosure Usability for LCSA and Environmental Security Risk Analysis in Bulgaria and Moldova

Abstract

Reliable sustainability analysis requires more than the presence of ESG disclosure; it requires information that is specific, traceable and analytically usable. This exploratory study assesses a purposive corpus of 36 organisations in Bulgaria and Moldova (18 per country) using a Data Gap Matrix covering 15 ESG indicators. The revised framework explicitly separates three observed disclosure-quality dimensions—availability, granularity and auditability—from two framework-assigned analytical overlays—LCSA relevance and environmental-risk relevance. Environmental security is retained only as a framework-based interpretive lens for the environmental-risk overlay and is not treated as an observed outcome. The matrix generated 540 organisation–indicator coding units. Medians, interquartile ranges and score frequencies are the primary descriptive summaries; country and sector tests are retained only as secondary, sample-specific checks and are restricted to the three observed dimensions. Auditability is the principal weakness (median = 1.00), with only 7 of 540 coding units receiving the maximum score, while Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions constitute the weakest observed indicator. No Holm-adjusted country or sector difference is established for the observed disclosure-quality dimensions, consistent with limited statistical power. The findings diagnose limited disaggregation, source traceability and assurance readiness, but do not measure organisational ESG performance, conduct an LCSA, or establish environmental-security outcomes. Interpretation is constrained by purposive sampling, heterogeneous report types, common-indicator applicability and the absence of independent double coding.