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Environmental and financial performance of fossil fuel firms : a closer inspection of their interaction

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ECOLEC_2016_239_Revision_AM.pdf (475.0Kb)
Date
02/2017
Author
Gonenc, Halit
Scholtens, Bert
Keywords
Environmental performance
Financial performance
Firm-level analysis
Fossil fuel firms
Corporate responsibility
HG Finance
3rd-NDAS
BDC
R2C
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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.
Citation
Gonenc , H & Scholtens , B 2017 , ' Environmental and financial performance of fossil fuel firms : a closer inspection of their interaction ' , Ecological Economics , vol. 132 , pp. 307-328 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.10.004
Publication
Ecological Economics
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.10.004
ISSN
0921-8009
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2016, Elsevier B.V. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.10.004
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/12172

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