Greenwashing the Talents: attracting human capital through environmental pledges

Wassim Le Lann (), Gauthier Delozière () and Yann Le Lann ()
Additional contact information
Wassim Le Lann: UO - Université d'Orléans, LEO - Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [2022-...] - UO - Université d'Orléans - UT - Université de Tours - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne
Gauthier Delozière: CMB - Centre Marc Bloch - MEAE - Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères - Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung - M.E.N.E.S.R. - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, EdD - École de Droit de Sciences Po (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po
Yann Le Lann: Université de Lille, CeRIES - Centre de Recherche "Individus Epreuves Sociétés" - ULR 3589 - Université de Lille

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Climate movement; Greenwashing; Human capital; Organizational behavior; Labor market; Machine Learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-06-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-ene and nep-env
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04140191v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-04140191v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04140191

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().