Corporate boards and environmental offence conviction: evidence from the United Kingdom

<p>Purpose – This paper aims to report the results of an investigation into the relationship betweencorporate boards and the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence in the UnitedKingdom (UK).Design/methodology/approach – The study uses binary logistics regression analysis to model therelationship between corporate boards and the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmentaloffence in the UK, controlling for firm size, financial leverage and profitability.Findings – The results suggest that the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offenceincreases with board size but decreases with the presence of a woman on the board. No support isfound for the authors’ hypotheses about the proportion of outside directors and the presence of a lawyeron the board. Marginal effects’ results also show that adding one member to the board increases thechance of a firm being convicted for an environmental offence by 4.2 per cent, while having a woman onthe board decreases the likelihood of a firm being convicted of an environmental offence by 31.8per cent.Research limitations/implications – The sample size of 55 firms is small which could affect thegeneralisability of the study.Originality/value – The study uses proprietary data obtained from the UK Environmental Agency toprovide evidence for the first time how corporate boards affect the chances of a listed firm beingconvicted of an environmental offence in the UK.</p>