Environmental and Financial Performance of Fossil Fuel Firms: A Closer Inspection of their Interaction

Halit Gonenc and Bert Scholtens

Ecological Economics, 2017, vol. 132, issue C, 307-328

Abstract: We investigate the relationship between environmental and financial performance of fossil fuel firms. To this extent, we analyze a large international sample of firms in chemicals, oil, gas, and coal with respect to several environmental indicators in relation to financial performance for the period 2002–2013. We find that these firms have significantly higher scores on environmental performance efforts than other firms. We use a simultaneous equations system to identify the direction of the relationship between environmental and financial performance of the firms. We find that environmental outperformance has no impact on financial performance for chemical firms, reduces returns and risks for coal companies, has a mixed impact on returns in oil and gas, and reduces financial risks for oil and gas firms. Financial outperformance reduces environmental performance in all fossil fuel (sub)industries investigated. Our findings mainly support the opportunistic view regarding the impact of financial returns, which holds that financial performance negatively impacts social performance. Regarding financial risk, we find support for the stakeholder perspective where good environmental performance is beneficial from a finance perspective. We conclude to substantial differences in the environmental-financial performance relationship along fossil fuel firms in different subindustries.

Keywords: Environmental performance; Financial performance; Fossil fuel firms; Corporate responsibility; Firm-level analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G32 M14 Q43 Q51 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (62)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:132:y:2017:i:c:p:307-328

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.10.004

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