Luederitz Christopher, Animesh Animesh, Rohrbacher Katrin, Li Tiange, Piper Andrew, Potvin Catherine, Etzion Dror
Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal, QC H3A 1G5 Canada.
Faculty of Science, McGill University, Montreal, QC Canada.
Sustain Sci. 2023;18(6):2649-2660. doi: 10.1007/s11625-023-01386-1. Epub 2023 Jul 10.
The dominant narrative to motivate business actors to take climate actions emphasizes opportunities to increase monetary gains, linking sustainability to the financial goals of these organizations. The prevalence of monetary motivations in sustainability communication among businesses, consultancies, academics and international organizations has made this narrative a truism in the private sector. We conducted an online, real-world, large- experiment to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of different motivations using narrative communication. We show that non-monetary narratives highlighting prosocial or achievement motivations are 55% more effective in creating responses from businesses than narratives emphasizing monetary gains. These findings are robust across most narrative and audience characteristics, including age and language. Our findings suggest that communication towards business leaders around sustainability can be multi-pronged and should incorporate prosocial and achievement motivations aside from articulating potential financial benefits.
激励企业行为体采取气候行动的主流叙事强调增加货币收益的机会，将可持续性与这些组织的财务目标联系起来。企业、咨询公司、学术界和国际组织在可持续性沟通中普遍存在货币动机，这使得这种叙事在私营部门成为不言而喻的事实。我们进行了一项在线、真实世界的大型实验，以评估使用叙事沟通的不同动机的相对有效性。我们发现，强调亲社会或成就动机的非货币叙事在促使企业做出回应方面比强调货币收益的叙事有效55%。这些发现在大多数叙事和受众特征（包括年龄和语言）方面都很稳健。我们的研究结果表明，围绕可持续性与企业领导者的沟通可以是多方面的，除了阐明潜在的财务利益外，还应纳入亲社会和成就动机。
