Disentangling the influence of internationalization on sustainability development: Evidence from the energy sector Gómez Bolaños, Efrén Hurtado Torres, Nuria Esther Delgado Márquez, Blanca Luisa Internationalization Sustainability Developing countries Energy industry The authors are grateful to the competitive research grant ECO2016‐75909‐P for providing funding for this research. This paper aims to deepen our understanding of the relationship between firms’ internationalization and their sustainability development. We expected firms with a higher level of internationalization to exhibit better environmental management and performance. A sample of 287 publicly traded firms in the energy and energy-related utilities sector was used to test these relationships. We focused on the energy sector, as energy production and supply have historically accounted for the lion’s share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We found that firms´ level of internationalization had a positive effect on their environmental management, while its effect on environmental performance was not found to be significant. We also tested whether these relationships change when firms’ internationalization is oriented towards developing countries. Upon a closer look, this relationship was found to be significant for internationalization towards developing countries and better environmental management, thus contributing to the line of literature that does not support the pollution haven hypothesis 2024-03-12T13:15:07Z 2024-03-12T13:15:07Z 2019 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Published version: Gómez Bolaños, Efrén et al. Disentangling the influence of internationalization on sustainability development: Evidence from the energy sector. Business Strategy and the Environment, 29(1), 229-239. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2360 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/89947 10.1002/bse.2360 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Wiley