Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2022, 68(8):283-292 | DOI: 10.17221/137/2022-AGRICECON

Environmental strategy and firm performance: A new methodological proposalOriginal Paper

Marta Arbelo-Pérez*, Yaiza Armas-Cruz, Antonio Arbelo
Department of Economics and Business Management, Instituto Universitario de la Empresa (IUDE), Universidad de La Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain

Environmental strategies and their effects on firm performance are receiving increased attention in the literature, but the results are inconclusive. To fill this gap, we propose to evaluate the effect of environmental strategies on firm performance, thereby making two significant contributions. The first is the use of Bayesian techniques to estimate a stochastic frontier model with random coefficients to evaluate the relationship between environmental strategies and performance at the individual firm level, thus adequately incorporating heterogeneity; the second is the adoption of profit efficiency as a measure of firm performance. To test this idea, we studied the effect of a set of pollutants on profit efficiency in a sample of livestock firms in Spain. The results reveal that i) the success of environmental strategies depends on the properties and internal characteristics of each firm and the environment in which it operates and ii) the mean efficiency is 55.80%, which implies that these firms are losing on average 44.20% of their maximum potential profit. These results have significant strategic implications for firms' ability to achieve a competitive advantage.

Keywords: Bayesian approach; environmental strategies; heterogeneity; livestock industry; profit efficiency; resource based view

Published: August 25, 2022  Show citation

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Arbelo-Pérez M, Armas-Cruz Y, Arbelo A. Environmental strategy and firm performance: A new methodological proposal. Agric. Econ. - Czech. 2022;68(8):283-292. doi: 10.17221/137/2022-AGRICECON.
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