Exploring the association between financial and nonfinancial carbon-related incentives and carbon performance

Firms increasingly respond to pressures to reduce their carbon emissions by providing financial and nonfinancial carbon-related incentives that should align and extrinsically motivate individuals’ behaviour towards improved carbon performance. We explore whether and how the provision of carbon-related incentives is associated with carbon performance. We employ data on carbon-related incentives and carbon emissions that S&P 500 firms voluntarily disclose to the CDP. Correcting for sample-induced endogeneity and time-series dependencies, we find that financial carbon-related incentives are associated with superior carbon performance, while nonfinancial carbon-related incentives are not associated with carbon performance. Financial carbon-related incentives appear to extrinsically motivate managers and employees and channel their efforts towards improving carbon performance. However, nonfinancial carbon-related incentives do not appear to be effective. These differences may be explained by the fact that financial carbon-related incentives trigger different cognitive and motivational mechanisms (e.g. utility, expectancies) in individuals than nonfinancial carbon-related incentives.