When Are Voluntary Environmental Programs More Effective? A Meta-Analysis of the Role of Program Governance Quality

Svetlana Flankova, Peter Tashman (), Marc van Essen () and Valentina Marano
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Svetlana Flankova: University of Liverpool
Peter Tashman: UMass Lowell - University of Massachusetts [Lowell] - UMASS - University of Massachusetts System
Marc van Essen: University of South Carolina [Columbia]
Valentina Marano: Northeastern University [Boston]

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Abstract: We meta-analyze 103 studies of 23 voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) to assess how their governance quality, or the rigor of their internal institutional mechanisms, drives their ability to improve their participants corporate environmental and financial performance. The goal of VEPs is to incentivize firms to reduce firms' environmental impacts by bolstering their reputations and helping them learn practices that improve their financial performance. Research on VEP effectiveness, however, is inconclusive, in part, because most studies sampled individual programs, and were unable to analyze how difference in program characteristics drive their effectiveness. We draw on institutional theory to argue that VEP governance quality determines whether they improve participants' environmental performance, and the natural resource-based view to argue that they improve their financial performance. Results confirm our predictions, and in doing so, help to establish a business case for VEPs with high-quality governance.

Keywords: corporate environmental performance; corporate financial performance; meta-analysis; self-regulatory institutions; voluntary environmental programs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07-01
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Published in Business and Society, 2024, 63 (6), pp.1340 - 1379. ⟨10.1177/00076503231202018⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05656777

DOI: 10.1177/00076503231202018

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