Firms’ Environmental Performance: Voluntary Actions and Managerial Attitudes

This study considers Malaysian palm oil mills’ Environmental Performance from two aspects: voluntary actions and firm’s internal factors effects. Having a good understanding of the factors affecting the environmental performance of firm helps policy-makers develop more effective environmental policies. In fact, analyzing the factors helps the firm evaluate and improve the results of their voluntary actions. Environmental performance, in this study, is specified as a function of voluntary actions, managerial attitudes, and some control variables. Our findings show that voluntary actions have the highest contribution to a firm’s environmental performance among others. Managerial attitudes toward improving environmental performance also have a significant effect on the firm’s environmental performance. However, age and size seem to have negative effects. Our results reveal that public owned firms are more polluting than their privately owned counterparts.

Firm environmental performance Voluntary actions Managerial attitudes Palm oil mills