Impacto de la certificación ISO 14001 en el rendimiento financiero empresarial: conclusiones de un estudio empírico

This article analyses the relationship between ISO 14001 certification and financial performance through a quantitative empirical study. The main contribution of this paper is based on the application of a longitudinal methodology, examining the performance levels before and after certification; in other words, we analyse the selection effect and the treatment effect of ISO 14001 certification. The results show that performance differences before certification are higher than differences after certification. Then, the better performance of certified firms may be due to a selection effect: firms with better performance have a higher tendency to achieve ISO 14001 certification.