Title :

Greenwashing the Talents: attracting human capital through environmental pledges

Author(s) :

Le Lann, Wassim [Auteur correspondant]
Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [2022-...] [LEO]
Université d'Orléans [UO]
Delozière, Gauthier [Auteur]
École de Droit de Sciences Po (Sciences Po) [EdD]
Centre Marc Bloch [CMB]
Le Lann, Yann [Auteur]
Centre de Recherche "Individus Epreuves Sociétés" - ULR 3589 [CeRIES]
Université de Lille

Publication date :

2023-04

English keyword(s) :

Climate movement
Greenwashing
Human capital
Organizational behavior
Labor market
Machine Learning

HAL domain(s) :

Statistiques [stat]
Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

English abstract : [en]

In times of global ecological crisis, the responsibility of large corporations in environmental degradation is increasingly pointed out. As a result, there has been a surge in private organizations' pledges to reduce their ...
Show more >In times of global ecological crisis, the responsibility of large corporations in environmental degradation is increasingly pointed out. As a result, there has been a surge in private organizations' pledges to reduce their environmental impact in recent years. In this paper, we demonstrate that companies with poor environmental responsibility have incentives to take such pledges to maintain their ability to attract high-skilled human capital. Through a case study on a French climate movement which was initiated by elite students who threatened to boycott job offers from polluting employers, we find that environmental pledges can significantly attenuate this selection effect. Using a unique and large survey database on the climate movement participants (n=2307) and machine learning classifiers, we find that individuals who initially intended to refuse a job offer from a polluting employer were, on average, three times less likely to hold such intentions after being exposed to a corporate environmental pledge. This result can be explained by the fact that intentions to refuse to work for polluting companies, and reactions to environmental pledges are driven by different factors. Furthermore, we find substantial heterogeneity in the response to environmental pledges, which is primarily explained by career perspectives, beliefs about the ecological crisis and support for radical political action in the name of ecology.Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Collections :

• Centre de Recherche "Individus Epreuves Sociétés" (CeRIES) - ULR 3589

Source :

Harvested from HAL