Beyond CO2 emissions – The role of digitalization in multi-dimensional environmental performance measurement

Abstract

The purpose of our paper is to investigate how digitalization can support environmental performance (EP) management – going beyond the CO2 emission measurement. Digitalization can help increase company performance many ways, this paper focuses on its effect on EP. Environmental performance is mainly assessed by output indicators, however, in our approach we prove that digitalization makes it possible to measure and manage multiple indicators by enabling better process visibility and extensive data collection. Our methodology is based on statistical analysis, we analyze corporate EP according to a multi-dimensional model and prove that digitally advanced companies perform better in multiple dimensions of environmental sustainability. We found that digitally advanced companies use various technologies to gather, store and process data which results in a significantly better application of environmental accounting and environmental management systems. The originality of our paper is that next to a wide – not only technological – interpretation of digitalization we suggest and apply a multi-dimensional environmental performance measurement model.