ABSTRACT

The empirical literature considers firm-specific aspects affecting corporate sustainability decisions but generally omits the influence of the competition. We advocate that sustainability actions of a company impact its marketplace and vice versa. Therefore, the sustainability return of the single firm is a function of the other firms’ sustainability decisions. We approach sustainability decisions as strategic decisions and evaluate the effect of competition and spillovers in a static market entry game. We estimate the parameters of the discrete choice model using the social performance ratings from MSCI KLD 400 Social Index as proxy for sustainability decisions and financial information from Wharton Research Data Services’ COMPUSTAT dataset. When strategic interaction is not accounted for, we find that an increase in the number of competitors increases the likelihood of sustainability investments, seemingly shows the spillover effect dominates the competition. When we apply the multi-stage approach, which incorporates competitive interaction, we provide empirical evidence that the effect of competition on the likelihood of entry into the sustainability market dominates the effect of spillover. We find that strategic motives, typically ignored in the empirical literature, appear to be an important factor in understanding sustainability-related decisions.

摘要

实证文献考虑了影响企业可持续性决策的企业特定方面，但通常忽略了竞争的影响。我们提倡公司的可持续发展行动会影响其市场，反之亦然。因此，单个公司的可持续性回报是其他公司可持续性决策的函数。我们将可持续发展决策视为战略决策，并评估静态市场进入博弈中竞争和溢出的影响。我们使用 MSCI KLD 400 社会指数中的社会绩效评级作为沃顿研究数据服务公司 COMPUSTAT 数据集的可持续决策和财务信息的代理来估计离散选择模型的参数。如果不考虑战略互动，我们发现，竞争者数量的增加增加了可持续性投资的可能性，似乎表明溢出效应在竞争中占主导地位。当我们应用包含竞争互动的多阶段方法时，我们提供了经验证据，证明竞争对进入可持续发展市场的可能性的影响超过了溢出效应。我们发现，通常在实证文献中被忽略的战略动机似乎是理解可持续性相关决策的重要因素。我们提供的经验证据表明，竞争对进入可持续市场的可能性的影响主导了溢出效应。我们发现，通常在实证文献中被忽略的战略动机似乎是理解可持续性相关决策的重要因素。我们提供的经验证据表明，竞争对进入可持续市场的可能性的影响主导了溢出效应。我们发现，通常在实证文献中被忽略的战略动机似乎是理解可持续性相关决策的重要因素。