Sustainable business practices—an environmental economics perspective

In this chapter, we will discuss corporate social responsibility (CSR) from an environmental economics perspective. The discussion is based on existing research and aims to illuminate some concepts and create an explanatory framework for understanding the corporate behavior referred to as CSR and especially the environmental responsibility dimension. We argue that a theory about CSR would have to include trade-offs between personal taste and values, social norms, and market imperfections. The challenge with progressing academic research about CSR would be improving environmental accounting frameworks, both at the national level and at firm level. The system of double bookkeeping needs to be accompanied by environmental, social, and material flows accounts in a more detailed manner than what we see today. If not, any proposed theory about CSR would run the risk of being moot as it would be impossible to put it to the test.