Browsing by Subject "Green buildings"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Do governance structures drive green building adoption? A machine learning approach with random forests
    (Wiley, 2026-02-15) Valls Martínez, María del Carmen; Santos Jaén, José Manuel; Sánchez Pacheco, María Estefanía; Zambrano Farías, Fernando José; Economía Financiera y Contabilidad; Facultad de Economía y Empresa
    This study examines the determinants of firms' propensity to adopt green buildings in the Euro Stoxx 300 and the S&P 500 indices, during 2012–2023. Using random forest binary classifiers, we assess the relative importance of financial, sectoral, geographic, and climate governance predictors and uncover nonlinear relationships often overlooked by econometric approaches. Results show that sectoral affiliation is the most influential determinant in both markets. Governance-related predictors are collectively highly influential, although they exhibit different patterns across institutional contexts. In Europe, the presence of a Sustainability Committee charged with climate strategy is the most influential factor, whereas in the United States, nonfinancial/environmental performance disclosure plays a prominent role. CEO-related mechanisms show asymmetric effects. Other board characteristics, such as gender diversity, independence, size, skills, experience, turnover, meetings, and remuneration, also matter, but their impact varies by institutional context. Overall, the findings highlight that corporate governance plays a decisive yet asymmetric role in sustainable-building adoption.
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    The impact of board gender diversity on green building practices: Moving beyond traditional linear and logistic specifications
    (Willey, 2024-10-13) Montero, Jose-María; Valls Martínez, María del Carmen; Santos Jaén, José Manuel; Economía Financiera y Contabilidad
    This article examines the relationship between sustainability and gender equality by analyzing how the percentage of women on the board of directors (still less than 50% in most cases) influences a company's commitment to green building practices. For this analysis, we estimate 30 competing multivariate pooled and panel data logistic specifications, including the gender diversity factor in both its traditional and polynomial forms. This methodological innovation (the polynomial form) allows for the examination of gender diversity's relationship with other variables beyond conventional models that assume constant effects, thus enabling a more realistic depiction of impacts that vary with the degree of diversity. Our dataset includes companies listed on the Euro Stoxx 300 and Standard & Poor's 500 for the period 2010–2021. The findings indicate that, in both indices, an increased percentage of women on the board (and a higher Blau diversity index) correlates with a greater propensity for sustainable building practices, up to a threshold nearing parity. The impacts are more significant in Europe than in the U.S., where board gender diversity appears to have a lesser influence on green building initiatives. The specification that best models the relationship between sustainable building practices and gender diversity, along with other relevant factors, is a multivariate panel data logistic model with the gender diversity factor included as a cubic polynomial for companies listed on the Euro Stoxx 300. A similar model, but with the gender factor in a quadratic polynomial form, was selected for companies listed on the Standard & Poor's 500. Therefore, the impact function of gender diversity on sustainable building practices is not constant but depends on the existing degree of board gender diversity, with the shape of the impact function differing between Europe and the U.S. Additionally, the study finds that other board characteristics—larger boards, longer tenures of directors, and higher