New research from Gies College of Business finds that for already low-polluting public companies, increased media attention on their climate actions can reduce financial performance - even when coverage is positive.
“‘No News About Climate Action is Good News for Low-Polluting Firms,’ co-authored by Gies Business professor Gautam Pant and published in Production and Operations Management, challenges conventional wisdom about the value of positive publicity. Using machine learning to analyze more than 300,000 business and financial news articles about US public firms from 2005 to 2017, the researchers discovered that increased media attention on climate actions can lead to lower financial performance for low-polluting companies - regardless of whether that coverage was positive or negative.
