Do financial penalties for environmental violations facilitate improvements in corporate environmental performance? An empirical investigation
研究美国因环境违规被罚款的上市公司，发现罚款并未带来环境绩效改善，反而导致轻微恶化，对政策制定者和企业管理者有警示意义。
Abstract Environmental regulations play an essential role in managing firm behavior and providing a reference point for the minimum standards of corporate environmental performance, yet certain firms fail to ensure their environmental performance meets these standards. This research focuses on public firms that the US government has penalized for violating environmental regulations and investigates whether these firms subsequently improved their environmental performance. Surprisingly, neither the receipt of a penalty for an environmental violation nor the imposition of a greater penalty was associated with improvements in environmental performance. Instead, a penalty for environmental violation predicted further, albeit mild, deterioration in environmental performance. While the existing literature has established that financial penalties deter most firms from committing environmental violations, this research contributes to this literature by revealing that these penalties fail to motivate firms that have violated environmental regulations to improve their environmental performance.