Publikationen (FIS)

What makes businesses commit to nature conservation?

authored by
Marlen S. Krause, Nils Droste, Bettina Matzdorf
Abstract

To halt the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, various actors including companies need to engage, but it is not yet clear what drives voluntary business commitments. We explore leverage points that might increase corporate action for conservation. We apply a structural equation model based on the theory of planned behaviour to analyse data from 618 German companies, collected through an online-survey in 2019. We show that a favourable attitude, driven by perceived business relevance and benefit prospects, fosters engagement. Perceived difficulties, such as lacking finances and knowledge, hinder the engagement. Customers, employees and the general public are presently the only stakeholder groups that drive corporate conservation engagement. Nevertheless, the expectation levels of virtually all stakeholders were found to be quite low and as such inadequate for the ecological crisis we face. We discuss how political will and goal setting can encourage more widespread business support for the natural environment.

Organisation(s)
Institute of Environmental Planning
External Organisation(s)
Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)
Lund University
Type
Article
Journal
Business Strategy and the Environment
Volume
30
Pages
741-755
No. of pages
15
ISSN
0964-4733
Publication date
01.02.2021
Publication status
Published
Peer reviewed
Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Business and International Management, Geography, Planning and Development, Strategy and Management, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Electronic version(s)
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2650 (Access: Open)
https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/233689 (Access: Open)