The Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Environmental Responsibility of the Companies

Abstract

The severe economic crisis is affecting significantly to the environment in which companies have to continue with their business. Consequently, academicians and managers are worried about what is going to happen with the Social Responsibility and particularly with the Environmental Responsibility, due to the decrease in the financial performance of the companies. The aim of this paper is to study the effect of the crisis on the environmental behavior of the Spanish companies through an explicative study, deepening in the comparison between the years 2006 and 2010. As a result, Spanish companies continue carrying out behaving in an environmentally friendly way because their Environmental Scores are growing, despite the decline of the Financial Performance. Moreover, it is identified a change in the factors that affect to the environmental behavior due to the identification of less dependence on corporate financial performance.