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If you want small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) to engage more with climate change, don’t make it only about money.
That’s the key takeaway from a recent study by post-doctoral fellow Christopher Luederitz and Professor Animesh Animesh at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management. They tested different messages to see which ones would encourage SMEs to engage in conversations about how to become more sustainable. Messages that featured non-monetary narratives significantly outperformed those focused purely on profits.
These findings challenge the traditional approach to climate communications. Typically, advocates will only argue that businesses can reduce costs or increase revenue using sustainable practices. Indeed, money is an important part of the equation. Many SMEs operate on thin margins. If solar panels can save them a dollar in electricity costs, that’s a good reason to invest. But money is rarely the only reason a business might want to involve themselves.
“When you interview small businesses and you ask them why they work on sustainability, you get so many different stories,” said Luederitz.
They care about their kids’ future, they want to have a positive impact on their community, they want to be a sustainable leader in their industry. For these businesses, money isn’t the most important reason for pursing sustainability.
Connecting to Climate
SMEs make up over 90 percent of businesses in Canada. They’re comprised of everything from mom-and-pop convenience stores to independent law offices. The Business Development Bank of Canada estimates that SMEs generate 52 percent of all greenhouse gases produced by Canadian businesses, or 41 percent of Canada’s total emissions.
These business owners may not be aware of the opportunities and benefits involved with addressing climate change. Appealing to their intrinsic values could be the push they need to seek out resources and support for their transition.
In this case, Luederitz and Animesh wanted to drive traffic to gopivot.org, a website they created for SMEs to exchange resources, discuss challenges, and find a community of sustainability-oriented business leaders.
With the help of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), they tested three kinds of narratives: monetary, pro-social, and achievement. The McGill and NFB team crafted stories that fit each theme, and these narratives were placed in ads on Facebook as part of a randomized field experiment. They then measured the number of clicks for each message.
They found that pro-social and achievement-oriented messages outperformed monetary messages by a staggering 55 percent.
These findings could be useful for government, NGOs, private companies, or anyone who is designing messaging to promote corporate social responsibility, explained Animesh.
This article is written by Eric Dicaire.
Delve is the official thought leadership platform of McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management. Subscribe to the Delve podcast on all major podcast platforms, including Apple podcasts and Spotify, and follow Delve on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
Animesh Animesh
