환경경영 활동에 대한 환경투자 및 비용이 기업가치에 미치는 영향

As environmental issues take on growing importance, significant changes are taking place to government policies both at home and abroad as well as in international trends. Under the changing circumstances, companies are increasingly expected to assume greater environmental responsibility and take into consideration both profitability and environmental sustainability as the foundation for sustainable growth in the course of environmental management. In line with these trends, Socially Responsible Investment(SRI) is emerging as an important concept of investment strategy among global investors. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to examine how environmental investments and costs as part of environmental management activities by environmentally responsible corporations are evaluated in the capital market. In other words, the paper will analyze how environmental investments and costs affect firm value. As a result, it intends to remind companies and investors how important it is for companies to improve their environmental management and how much such efforts can add to their firm value, by analyzing how investors perceive the importance of firm efforts to protect the environment and how they reflect such efforts in evaluating firm value. The research was conducted on listed companies that obtained ISO 14001 between 2005 and 2007 or those that have been designated as environment-friendly enterprises by the Ministry of Environment. An empirical analysis was performed based on the Ohlson Model(1995) to assess the impact of investments and costs associated with environmental management upon firm value as perceived by investors. The results show that environmental investments and costs are statistically significant at 1% and 5% levels, respectively. Environmental investments and costs that are viewed as expenditures to improve environmental performance of companies can certainly influence how investors perceive risks associated with the companies as investors as stakeholders are better informed of the company's efforts toward better environmental management. Consequently, capital cost will likely decrease and ultimately, firm value will increase. In summary, firm spending on environmental management including environmental investments and costs will eventually have a positive impact on how investors assess firm value.