INVESTIGATING THE DETERMINANTS AND ENDOGENOUS INFLUENCES OF ENVIRONMENTAL REPUTATION

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Young Soo Shim, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Accountancy, presented on 03/10/2017, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: INVESTIGATING THE DETERMINANTS AND ENDOGENOUS INFLUENES OF ENVIRONMENTAL REPUTATION MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Royce D. Burnett This study investigates (1) the determinants of a firm’s environmental reputation and (2) the impact of this reputation on employee productivity and financial performance. I extend existing work in this area by focusing on both the endogenous and exogenous benefits of the reputation. The endogenous benefits refer to positive impacts of the reputation on employee morale and employee productivity, which have generally been ignored by prior research. In developing my research hypotheses, I draw on the following five well-established theories: the costly signaling theory, the resource-based view of firm, the Porter’s eco-efficiency perspective, the social identity theory, and the third-person effect theory. A sample of 271 companies was drawn from the 500 largest U.S. public companies listed in the 2010 Newsweek’s green report. The corporate environmental data for this study were gathered from this report. Meanwhile, the corporate financial data were obtained from the Mergent database. Via multiple regression analyses, I find (1) environmental reputation is significantly and positively predicted by environmental management when firm environmental reputation is high; (2) environmental reputation is significantly and positively related to environmental performance when firm environmental reputation is low; (3) across the board, environmental reputation does not predict employee productivity; (4) environmental reputation is a significant and positive predictor of financial performance only for firms with high environmental reputation; and (5) employee productivity positively and significantly predicts financial performance only for firms with a high environmental reputation.