Biodiversity loss is considered as a critical global challenge with significant implications for ecosystems, economies, and societies. While the importance of biodiversity conservation is widely acknowledged, the extent to which biodiversity risk impacts firm performance remains an under‐explored area of research. This paper examines how biodiversity risk affects firm performance using a new measure of firm‐level biodiversity risk generated from textual analysis of firms' 10‐K reports. Our multivariate analysis shows that biodiversity risk significantly hinders performance of firms in the United States during the 2001–2021 period. The finding holds well after controlling various confounding factors, using alternative variable measurements, model specifications, and correcting for endogeneity problems in the biodiversity risk‐firm performance nexus. Besides decreasing sales growth and profitability, biodiversity risk increases in the cost of goods sold, as explained by the Cobb–Douglas production function. Interestingly, we find that the effect is stronger for firms in biodiversity‐sensitive industries, weaker for firms with more product innovation, and remains insignificant for firms with top‐tier performance. Our study provides policy and practical implications for businesses to mitigate biodiversity risk in this contemporary era of ecological degradation.

中文翻译：

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生物多样性风险和企业绩效：来自美国公司的证据


生物多样性丧失被认为是一项关键的全球挑战，对生态系统、经济和社会具有重大影响。虽然生物多样性保护的重要性已得到广泛认可，但生物多样性风险对公司绩效的影响程度仍然是一个未得到充分探索的研究领域。本文使用对公司 10-K 报告的文本分析生成的公司层面生物多样性风险的新衡量标准来研究生物多样性风险如何影响公司绩效。我们的多变量分析表明，生物多样性风险严重阻碍了 2001 年至 2021 年期间美国公司的绩效。在控制了各种混杂因素、使用替代变量测量、模型规范并纠正生物多样性风险-公司绩效关系中的内生性问题后，这一发现成立良好。正如 Cobb-Douglas 生产函数所解释的那样，除了降低销售增长和盈利能力外，生物多样性风险还会增加销售商品的成本。有趣的是，我们发现，这种影响对生物多样性敏感行业的公司更强，对产品创新较多的公司的影响较弱，而对于表现一流的公司来说仍然微不足道。我们的研究为企业在当今生态退化时代减轻生物多样性风险提供了政策和实际意义。