“It’s not what you say, but how you say it”:How the provision of qualitative, quantitative and monetary environmental information influences companies’ internal decision making

Abstract

Increasingly, companies are taking into account environmental issues, such as climate change, in their decision making. Information on environmental issues can be provided for this purpose in qualitative, quantitative physical, or quantitative monetary forms. Previous studies show that the way in which information is provided significantly affects how the respective problem is perceived and responded to and in turn how this influences decision making. This paper builds on a survey-based experiment among business students. Using generalized estimating equations, it analyses the effects on companies’ decision making of providing different types of environmental information. The results show that providing solely monetized environmental information can potentially devalue the perceived importance of the information and that monetization may decrease the effect of favorable environmental information on willingness to pay in companies’ internal decision making. On the other hand, providing quantitative physical environmental information is likely to increase the importance ascribed to environmental issues. Thus, this article highlights that “how you say it” in terms of providing environmental information is important for companies’ internal decision making.