Environmental Management System (ISO 14001) and Total-Factor Carbon Emission Performance: A Two-Stage Malmquist Data Envelopment Analysis

As global decarbonization goals become more urgent, it is vital to understand that decoupling carbon from growth is not a purely mechanical process of adopting green machines; it is a socio-technical transition. Understanding carbon productivity requires analyzing the synergy between voluntary standards and strict regulation, demonstrating that technology only drives societal change when embedded in a robust institutional framework that prevents mere compliance. Therefore, this cross-country panel study examines whether the diffusion of Environmental Management System (EMS) ISO 14001 is associated with improvements in total-factor carbon emission performance in 15 countries with the highest ISO 14001 adoption intensity over 2010-2024, yielding a balanced panel of 210 country-year observations. Using a two-stage Malmquist Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, we decompose change in carbon performance into two critical vectors: change in efficiency (catch-up effect) and technological change (frontier shift). The decomposition results indicate that, for most countries, 24% in carbon performance observed gains were more closely associated with efficiency catch-up than with frontier-shifting technological change. Whereas Germany shows consistently shifted the carbon-efficiency frontier during the study period.