Incentive Contracts and Environmental Performance Indicators

A principal-agent (P-A) model is used to analyse the effect of environmentaldiligence, the principal (top management), having to use imperfectperformance indicators and fearing penalties for environmental damages,wants to avoid environmental harm and induce the agent (employeemanipulating hazardous materials) to take appropriate action. To motivatethe agent, the principal offers an incentive contract based onenvironmental stewardship performance (as measured by EPI).Environmental stewardship being difficult to measure, due to high levelsof uncertainty surrounding, EPI, creates impediments to the establishmentof an efficient P-A contract. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001