How to encourage business professionals to adopt sustainable practices? Experimental evidence that the ‘business case’ discourse can backfire
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- dc.contributor.author Rode, Julian
- dc.contributor.author Heinz, Nicolai
- dc.contributor.author Cornelissen, Gert
- dc.contributor.author Le Menestrel, Marc
- dc.date.accessioned 2024-02-01T07:01:06Z
- dc.date.available 2024-02-01T07:01:06Z
- dc.date.issued 2021
- dc.description.abstract Appeals to companies to adopt more sustainable practices are typically either framed as a request to assume ‘responsibility’ towards society and the future of the planet, or as a ‘business case’ (BC) for sustainability. The business case discourse emphasizes how sustainable practices can enhance (financial) business performance. We conducted a survey-based online experiment with business professionals to empirically explore the effectiveness of the two discourse types in motivating business actors to adopt more sustainable practices. Our results suggest that professionals believe that the business case discourse is more effective in encouraging businesses to engage with sustainability than the responsibility discourse. However, exposure to the business case discourse in the experiment did not lead these professionals to state a stronger motivation or intention to act in favour of sustainability within their organization. Furthermore, compared to the responsibility discourse, an appeal based on a business case discourse resulted in less approval for pro-environmental investments when these could not be justified by reputational benefits. Since effective measures to improve corporate environmental performance do not always involve win-win situations, our results raise concerns about the use of the business case approach to encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices.
- dc.description.sponsorship This work was financially supported by the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research IP 12 on Land Use Conflicts and by the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Education (grant number PGC2018-098949-B-I00).
- dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
- dc.identifier.citation Rode J, Heinz N, Cornelissen G, Le Menestrel M. How to encourage business professionals to adopt sustainable practices? Experimental evidence that the ‘business case’ discourse can backfire. Journal of Cleaner Production. 2021 Feb 10;283:124618. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124618
- dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124618
- dc.identifier.issn 0959-6526
- dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/58918
- dc.language.iso eng
- dc.publisher Elsevier
- dc.relation.ispartof Journal of Cleaner Production. 2021 Feb 10;283:124618
- dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/PGC2018-098949-B-I00
- dc.rights © Elsevier http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124618
- dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
- dc.subject.keyword Business
- dc.subject.keyword Environmental sustainability
- dc.subject.keyword Persuasive messaging
- dc.subject.keyword Business case for sustainability
- dc.subject.keyword Corporate responsibility
- dc.title How to encourage business professionals to adopt sustainable practices? Experimental evidence that the ‘business case’ discourse can backfire
- dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
- dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion