Promoting or Inhibiting? The Impact of Enterprise Environmental Performance on Economic Performance: Evidence from China’s Large Iron and Steel Enterprises

In recent years, the importance of corporate environmental responsibility has gradually become more prominent. This study combines the Slack-based Measurement (SBM) model with the “Super-efficiency” model to construct an environmental performance evaluation based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which is used to measure the environmental performance of China’s large iron and steel enterprises from 2009 to 2017. Moreover, the impact of environmental performance on enterprise economic performance is studied by regression analysis. The results show that that environmental performance and economic performance of large iron and steel enterprises in China are in an inverted U-shaped relationship. This encourages enterprises to be proactive in environmental management to maintain and enhance their competitive edge. Therefore, this research suggests that iron and steel enterprises should balance the relationship between environmental performance and economic performance, and adopt environmental protection behaviors to carry out production and operation, to maximize enterprise performance.