How can sustainability initiatives have a positive impact in corporate brand value?

Abstract

Over the past few decades, topics regarding environmentalism and how organizations are becoming more committed towards their own corporate environmentalism practices is heard more often, as well as several studies have been investigating the corporate consequences this topic have by measuring the firm performance. But what haven`t been explored so far, is if those eco-friendly practices have any effect on the firm`s market-based assets or its brand value and if so, how. Based on that, this study seeks to fulfill that gap as much as possible by showing how some industrial firms have favorable results on its brand value considering three salient areas of corporate environmentalism: environmental innovation, efficiency in utilizing natural resources and emission reduction. Through these activities, it was identified an outstanding performance with environmental innovation, as well as by using fewer and in a more efficiently way the natural resources is registered a fairly equal contribution to the brand value, but the contribution regarding reduction of emission was least compared to the other, even though still relevant.