Despite the growing importance of science-based targets (SBTs), our knowledge of their impact on corporate decarbonisation commitment is extremely limited due to inadequate research. To address this gap, we investigate the relationship between SBTs and corporate carbon reduction. Our empirical results reveal the following insights: First, the adoption of an SBT leads to significant subsequent carbon reduction in our sample companies. Second, decarbonisation does not occur until SBTs have been adopted for several years. Third, our findings show that the adoption of SBTs does not harm these companies’ profitability. Overall, our results suggest that SBTs are long-term investments that do not generate immediate but long-term and more sustainable outcomes. In sum, SBTs seem to be a strategy that can help management achieve a win-win situation: achieving a carbon reduction target without reducing economic growth. This justifies the need to study SBTs in future research in the field of carbon-accounting.

中文翻译：

---

基于科学的碳减排目标的作用：解决净零焦虑与经济增长之间的紧张关系


尽管基于科学的目标（SBT）越来越重要，但由于研究不足，我们对其对企业脱碳承诺的影响的了解极其有限。为了解决这一差距，我们研究了 SBT 与企业碳减排之间的关系。我们的实证结果揭示了以下见解：首先，采用 SBT 会导致我们的样本公司随后显着减少碳排放。其次，脱碳只有在 SBT 被采用几年后才会发生。第三，我们的研究结果表明，采用 SBT 不会损害这些公司的盈利能力。总体而言，我们的结果表明，SBT 是长期投资，不会产生立竿见影的效果，但会产生长期且更可持续的成果。总而言之，SBT似乎是一种可以帮助管理层实现双赢的策略：在不降低经济增长的情况下实现碳减排目标。这证明了在碳核算领域的未来研究中研究 SBT 的必要性。