The association between carbon reduction investment and operating performance: the case of the US industry

企業為了符合環保法規並提升環境績效而投入大量資金在設備及流程改善上，為了瞭解這些投資對企業帶來的減碳績效及營運績效之效果，本研究以美國企業為研究對象，利用內容分析法及多元迴歸分析法，探討企業減碳投資與其減碳績效、營運績效之關聯性。 實證結果顯示企業推動減碳投資與其減碳績效，環境敏感產業投資金額與其減碳量呈現顯著的倒U型之非線性關係，亦即投資金額越多其減碳績效越好，但投資到一定金額減碳績效則會降低。不論環境敏感性或非敏感性產業流動性強，規模大的企業經營績效較佳，但是投資程度與經營績效無顯著關聯，另外本研究首創將減碳的數量依國際平均碳交易價格轉換成企業之機會成本（視為企業收入或成本降低），發現減碳投資與經營績效仍無顯著關聯，而非環境敏感性企業如果公司對氣候變遷有相關激勵政策，經營績效較高，而環境敏感性企業如果公司，經營績效反而較低。因此本研究認為美國制訂之相關法案，在減碳績效上雖尚屬有效，但仍未使企業可因減碳投資創造出營運績效。Corporations invest a great deal of money in equipment and process improvement in order to comply with environmental regulations and enhance environmental performance. To understand the effects on the performance of carbon reduction and operating performance by these investments, this paper examines and compares the relationship between the corporation investment in carbon reduction and performance of carbon reduction, and also operating performance in the U.S., using the content analysis method and the multiple regression analysis method. The empirical results are summarized as follows. Investments in carbon reduction and performance of carbon reduction in corporations in the environmental sensitivity industry have a significant nonlinear relationship, in the form of an inverted-U shape relationship. The more dollars invested, the better the performance of carbon reduction. However, the performance of carbon reduction will reduce when invested to a certain amount. No matter environmental sensitivity industry or non-environmental sensitivity industry with a strong current ratio and large size business has a better operating performance, and the degree of emission reduction investment does not associate with operating performance. The paper applies CO2 market price to emission reduction amount to construct an emission reduction opportunity cost (regarding as business's income or cost reduction), and finds that the emission reduction investment still does not associate with revised operating performance. However, the non-environmental sensitivity industry with climate change incentive policy has a better revised operating performance than that of environmental sensitivity industry. Therefore , the study concludes that although the USA's climate change related Acts have some positive influence on emission reduction, the Acts do not make the business's emission reduction investment to create some operating performance