Samsul Alam has recently published a paper in the Journal of Corporate Finance, with Muhammad Atif, Mohammed Hossain and Marc Goergen, showing that gender diversity on the board is positively related with renewable energy consumption.
The paper examines the effect of board gender diversity on renewable energy consumption. Using a panel of 11,677 firm-year observations from the USA for 2008–2016, they find a positive relationship between board gender diversity and renewable energy consumption. Moreover, boards require two or more women for women to have a significant impact on renewable energy consumption, consistent with critical mass theory.
They also document that the positive impact of female directors on renewable energy consumption stems from female independent rather than female executive directors. Finally, they find a positive effect of the interaction between renewable energy consumption and board gender diversity on firm financial performance. The findings are robust to different identification strategies and estimation techniques.