氣候變遷風險、環境管理與成本僵固性

Climate Change Risk, Environmental Management, and Cost Stickiness

本研究在探討氣候變遷風險對企業成本僵固性之間的關聯性。以美國上市公司為樣本，研究期間為2000 年至2018 年。研究結果發現，若企業總公司所屬的地區有較高的氣候變遷風險，企業越容易展現出成本僵固性的行為。此外，當我們將樣本區分為有較好的環境管理與較差的環境管理之後，研究結果顯示成本僵固性的現象只會存在於環境管理較差的子樣本中，換言之，當企業有較好的環境管理時，較能有效的減少氣候變遷所帶來的風險。具體而言，本研究的結果顯示，當企業面對較高的氣候風險時較易出現成本僵固的行為，但是若當企業有較好的環境管理時，則可減少氣候變遷所帶來的風險，進而減少成本僵固性行為的發生。

Using a sample of US publicly held companies spanning the period between 2000 and 2018, this study examines the effect of climate change risk on firms’ asymmetric cost reaction to sales changes (cost stickiness). We find that cost stickiness increases with climate change risk after we control for known determinants. We further split our sample into strong environmental management firms and weak environmental firms and find that the impact of climate change risk on cost stickiness is less profound for firms with better environmental management. Collectively, our results imply that firms retain slack resources when faced with higher climate change risk, but climate change risk is not the primary driver of cost stickiness when a company has better environmental management.