Purpose

Research suggests that chief executive officers (CEOs) play an important role in enhancing a firm’s legitimacy with regard to environmental performance. The purpose of this paper is to use the upper echelons theory and stakeholder theory to investigate whether the characteristics of CEOs are associated with carbon performance (CP).

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses a sample of 128 firm-year observations from Australian companies that participated in the carbon disclosure project from 2011 through 2014.

Findings

Two-stage least squares estimation reveals that CEO executive experience and CEO duality are positively associated with CP. By contrast, CEO tenure, CEO functional background experience and CEO industry experience are negatively related to CP, and CEO ownership is not related to CP.

Practical implications

The results might provide evidence for investors, policymakers and regulators with respect to the effectiveness of CEO characteristics for addressing carbon risks and possible linkages between CEO characteristics and carbon emission levels. In addition, the results give support CEO accountability regarding the carbon emissions.

Originality/value

This study provides the first empirical evidence of the impact of CEO characteristics on CP. Furthermore, this study contributes to the existing literature by showing how the characteristics of CEOs can impact corporate CP and provides a more in-depth understanding of whether such characteristics play important roles in determining corporate carbon action.

中文翻译：

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CEO 特征：它们对碳绩效重要吗？对澳大利亚公司的实证调查

目的

研究表明，首席执行官 (CEO) 在提高公司在环境绩效方面的合法性方面发挥着重要作用。本文的目的是利用上层梯队理论和利益相关者理论来研究CEO的特征是否与碳绩效（CP）相关。

设计/方法/方法

本文使用了从 2011 年到 2014 年参与碳披露项目的澳大利亚公司的 128 家公司年度观察样本。

发现

两阶段最小二乘估计表明 CEO 高管经验和 CEO 二元性与 CP 正相关。相比之下，CEO任期、CEO职能背景经验和CEO行业经验与CP呈负相关，CEO所有权与CP无关。

实际影响

结果可能为投资者、政策制定者和监管机构提供证据，证明 CEO 特征在解决碳风险方面的有效性以及 CEO 特征与碳排放水平之间可能存在的联系。此外，结果支持 CEO 在碳排放方面的责任。

原创性/价值

本研究首次提供了 CEO 特征对 CP 影响的实证证据。此外，本研究通过展示 CEO 的特征如何影响企业 CP 对现有文献做出贡献，并更深入地了解这些特征是否在决定企业碳行动中发挥重要作用。