Publication Type
PhD Dissertation
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
4-2024
Abstract
I examine whether and how firms incorporate retail customers’ environmental preferences into their pollution decisions. Leveraging the staggered revelations of firms’ environmental negative news and the granularity of household grocery shopping records, I quantify local customers’ heterogeneous environmental preferences based on the extent of product sales declines following the news events. In line with the conjecture that firms factor in rewards and penalties from customers and strategically reduce their pollution, I find a significant improvement in air quality near event firms’ facilities located in markets where local customers reveal the strongest environmental preferences. This effect is more pronounced when news events are more salient and when ex-ante information frictions between firms and customers are greater. Furthermore, I find no changes in firm-level pollution, and air quality significantly worsens in facilities located in markets where customers have weaker environmental preferences, corroborating firms’ pollution-shifting strategy. Overall, my findings shed light on retail customers’ role in firms’ environmental resource allocation.
Keywords
Environmental preferences, ESG preferences, Retail customers, Stakeholders, Pollution shifting, ESG resource allocation
Degree Awarded
PhD in Accounting
Discipline
Accounting
Supervisor(s)
CHENG, Qiang
First Page
1
Last Page
69
Publisher
Singapore Management University
City or Country
Singapore
Citation
YANG, Mengjie.
When I know your taste: Retail customers’ environmental preferences and firm pollution. (2024). 1-69.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/588
Copyright Owner and License
Author
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.