From Green to Green: Urban Parks and Corporate Emissions
Professor P. Eric Yeung
Professor of Accounting
Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University
We identify the openings of new urban parks in major U.S. cities and examine a potential link between the green space near a firm’s headquarter and its strategies related carbon emissions. We document that firms’ carbon emissions (i.e., both intensity and level) decrease significantly after a new park opens in the same zip-code area. Supporting causal inferences, the decreases are more pronounced when the city has fewer parks before the “green shock” and when the CEO is i) a female, ii) at a young age, or iii) in a Blue State. Consistent with the visual exposure mechanism, the decreases are more pronounced when the new park is i) larger, ii) located within a comfortable visual range from the headquarter, or iii) opened in cities with more sunny days. We also document significant increases in firms’ advertising expenditures and sales following a new park opening, consistent with a shift towards corporate green strategies.
