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Korean Academic Society of Business Administration
[ Article ]
korean management review - Vol. 52, No. 2, pp.487-512
ISSN: 1226-1874 (Print)
Print publication date 30 Apr 2023
Received 16 Jan 2023 Revised 02 Mar 2023 Accepted 10 Mar 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17287/kmr.2023.52.2.487

재벌 총수의 수감 및 사면경험이 기업의 탄소배출량에 미치는 영향: 재벌기업을 중심으로

Jae Yeon Sim ; Hongmin Chun
(First Author) Institute for Business Research and Education(IBRE), Korea University Business School drsim@korea.ac.kr
(Corresponding Author) Sungshin Women’s University, Department of Business Administration hmchun@sungshin.ac.kr
The Imprisonment and Clemency Experience of Chaebol Heads and Carbon Emission: Evidence from Korean Business Groups


Copyright 2011 THE KOREAN ACADEMIC SOCIETY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of the imprisonment and clemency experience of Chaebol heads on the amount of firm’s carbon emissions. Using data of Korean Chaebol firms between 2015 and 2019, we find that firms with the imprisonment and clemency experience of Chaebol heads are negatively associated with carbon emissions and abnormal carbon emissions compared with firms without those experiences. The results imply that firms with the imprisonment and clemency experience of Chaebol heads care about the amount of carbon emission to fulfill their environmental responsibilities although the amount of carbon emissions is not the public interest. Moreover, we find that firm value is decreased when firms with the imprisonment and clemency experience of Chaebol heads reduce the amount of carbon emissions. This finding suggests that market perceive firm’s carbon emission reduction as an opportunistic behavior. Taken together, this study contributes to carbon emissions literature by providing evidence of individual-level effect on the amount of firm’s carbon emissions.

Keywords:

Chaebol Heads, Imprisonment and Clemency, Carbon Emission, Imprinting Theory, Insurance Theory

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the National Research foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2022S1A5A2A01038367)

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∙ The author Jae Yeon Sim is currently working as a researcher at the Institute for Business Research and Education of Korea University Business School. She obtained a bachelor's degree (majoring in business administration), a master's degree, and a doctor’s degree (majoring in accounting) from Korea University Business School. The main research areas are blockchain technology, virtual currency, and analysis of corporate behavior due to the amendment of accounting standards.

∙ The author Hongmin Chun is currently full professor for Sungshin Women’s University, Department of Business Administration. His main research topic including ESG, audit effort, cost of equity capital and published 10 SSCI indexed journal papers such as Review of Managerial Science, Managerial Auditing Journal, Applied Economics, Finance Research Letters etc.