Speaker: Federico Bertacchini (DEMB-UNIMORE)
Abstract
Corporate environmental communication has become an essential aspect of modern business practices, as stakeholders increasingly demand transparency and accountability regarding sustainability efforts. Thus, business managers may feel compelled to disclose environmental‑related information in order to align with public opinion expectations. Within this context, we analyse how environmental disclosure on social media, specifically Twitter, is linked to firms’ relative environmental performance, and how this relates to their market value. Through a combination of text mining and econometric analyses, we show that firms experiencing an increase in their relative emission intensity by 10%, post 20 additional environmental‑related tweets on average per year. We argue that this behaviour is adopted in an attempt to gain legitimacy. Furthermore, our findings also highlight that these behaviours are punished by financial markets which tend to reward firms that associate the walk to the talk.