Purpose: The current study dealt with the ownership structure effect as a potential determinant of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance disclosure in the Jordanian context.Design/methodology/approach: Using the content analysis technique, data were collected and analyzed from a final sample of 51 annual reports of Jordanian industrial companies listed for 2012–2019.Findings: The results show that foreign ownership and state ownership play a critical role in disclosing the ESG performance. Also, the board's independence plays an influential role in improving disclosure quality, enhancing family ownership in disclosure. It also limits the negative role of block holder ownership and managerial ownership on the ESG disclosure.Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that deals with the role of ownership structure on the ESG disclosure level separately and collectively through the moderating role of board independence.

The aim of this study is to synthesize the rapidly increasing literature on privacy and security risk of digital payment. By reviewing 591 studies, the literature on this topic was evaluated using a bibliographical approach to highlight the intellectual development of the field and recommend potential research directions in this still-emerging field. According to our assessment, academics have continued to focus on perceived privacy and security, while more multigroup analyses based on subdimensions of risk are needed. In addition, the vast majority of studies have not considered the inter-relationship between risk attributes. We analyse the potential causes of the lack of research diversity and provide additional suggestions to improve digital payment research in the future. This study will be valuable for academics, analysts, regulators, practitioners, and investors.

The primary goal of this study is to investigate the influence of sustainability disclosure (SD) practices on the relationship between audit committee chair characteristics and firms’ performance. The current study used an experimental approach to data collection and analysis. The predicted variable is the AC chair characteristics; the predictor variables are the performance indicator’s return on equity (ROE). The study investigated the indirect impact of the mediating role in the SD index. We manually analysed 405 annual reports of the companies listed on the ASE from 2014 to 2018. The findings revealed a significant and positive relationship between the accounting expertise, tenure, and monitoring expertise of the AC chairs and the performance of the firm measures tested, namely, ROA and ROE. Meanwhile, AC chair experiential expertise types and firm performance measures have a positive but insignificant relationship. Furthermore, the findings revealed that sustainability disclosure mediates the relationship between AC chair effectiveness and ROE in part. The results of this study will help firms understand the expertise of AC chair characteristics that can help firms in Jordan to perform better. The findings indicated that the effectiveness of AC chairs contributes to improved firm performance through sustainability practices. This study is one of the few studies that dealt with AC chair characteristics and one of the first studies that linked this variable to firm performance. Furthermore, our selection of the Jordanian context emphasizes the topic’s importance, as it is one of the developing contexts that has recently seen regulatory reforms in financial markets. It also expands on previous research by looking at Jordan’s listed ASE firms.