The awareness, perception and motivational analysis of climate change and business perspectives in Malaysia

Abstract

This article aims to present the current state of corporate managers’ awareness and perception of climate change and to identify important motivational factors for company level climate change strategies and actions. The findings demonstrate a high degree of awareness and concern regarding climate change issues among the corporate managers surveyed in Malaysia. Although a majority of the corporate managers who were surveyed (70 %) perceived that climate change would affect their company’s profits, most of them (96 %) expressed the opinion that climate change has no effect on their country’s economy. In addition, a majority of these managers (71 %) believed that their company or business product does not contribute to climate change. The implications of climate change may vary across the types of corporate and business environments; therefore, businesses should take into account the impacts of climate change; indeed, accounting for these impacts is especially important when businesses make long-term investment decisions to take advantage of the available opportunities and deal with the associated risks. By employing a weighted average and a factor index value (FIV) model, empirical evidence shows that education and awareness, legislation and regulation, and the appropriate technology are the most important motivational factors. In addition, financial incentives, guidelines and training support, and research and development are also found to be important factors to motivate them to address climate change at their company. Finally, a number of strategies that derived from the study findings might have implications to the government and businesses for climate change actions.