Does It Pay to Be Green? The Case of French Ski Resorts

Abstract

This article aims to measure the influence of two environmental strategies: “concerned citizen” and “proactive” strategies on firms’ performance. A two-step data envelopment analysis (DEA) procedure is therefore used on a sample of 38 French ski resorts. First, the DEA method is used to evaluate ski resorts’ operational performance. Second, the impact of environmental strategies on their performance is analyzed via a bootstrapped truncated regression model. Contrary to findings of current studies, these results show that a “proactive” environmental strategy is not more positively correlated with firms’ performance than a “concerned citizen” strategy. The research highlights an inflection point on the correlation between environmental strategy and organization’s performance. By clarifying which green initiatives lead to performance improvements, this study helps managers defining their most advantageous environmental investments.