Empirical Evidence on Environmental Performance and Operating Costs*

Koegst Jakob, Guenster Nadja

Abstract

ABSTRACT
We investigate how environmental performance affects operating costs using a sample of 785 U.S. firms for the period 2006 - 2014. Environmental performance is measured as the overall environmental score provided by Asset4. We find that better environmental performance is negatively associated with direct production costs, but increases overhead costs. Because direct production costs have a larger impact than overhead costs, aggregate operating costs decline as environmental performance improves. To deal with endogeneity and to interpret the results causal, we use an instrumental variables approach.

Keywords

Environmental performance; Natural Resource Based View; Operating Cost

Cite as

Koegst, J., & Guenster, N. (2017). Empirical Evidence on Environmental Performance and Operating Costs*. In Proceedings of the 2017 Corporate Responsibility Research Conference, Sevillia, Spanien. (accepted / in press (not yet published))

Details

Publication type
Research article in proceedings (conference)

Peer reviewed
Yes

Publication status
accepted / in press (not yet published)

Year
2017

Conference
2017 Corporate Responsibility Research Conference

Venue
Sevillia, Spanien

Language
English