Shareholders and the environment: a review of four decades of academic research
Abstract
We provide a synthesis of four decades of empirical research regarding the reaction of shareholders to environmental events. This literature is at the crossroads of finance, environmental economics, management and corporate social responsibility (CSR). To set the stage, we first provide an account of the Brumadinho ecological disaster that occurred in Brazil on January 25th, 2019. Second, we provide a critical review of more than 100 event studies. These papers cover a diverse set of events, such as industrial accidents, public disclosure programs, legal actions following environmental violations, changes in environmental regulation, environmental news, and corporate initiatives. This review makes four contributions. First is the synthesis of a large strand of literature in a structured setting, so as to be readily handled by both experts and non-experts. Second is the observation that stock market penalties in the event of environmental concerns are likely to be quite low: on average there is a (temporary) drop in the excess stock market return to events that are harmful to the environment of about 2% and the median is −0.6%. Third is to highlight the limits of CSR as a business strategy towards a sustainable society. Fourth is to provide an open access bibliographic database.
Citation
Capelle-Blancard , G , Desroziers , A & Scholtens , B 2021 , ' Shareholders and the environment: a review of four decades of academic research ' , Environmental Research Letters , vol. 16 , no. 12 , 123005 . https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac3c6e
Publication
Environmental Research Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1748-9326Type
Journal item
Rights
Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Open Access. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.