Regulators increasingly require companies to report environmental, social, and governance information. The US Securities and Exchange Commission adopted new rules in March 2024 requiring public companies to explain climate-related risks when they publish annual reports and registration statements. Beginning with company reports published in 2025, the European Union will apply strengthened rules making large and listed companies disclose the risks and opportunities related to their ESG activities.
Such disclosures provide more information to investors, as well as to consumers who want to align their spending with their values. But does knowing about the ESG activities of a business actually change what shoppers buy?
Sinja Leonelli of New York University, Chicago Booth’s Maximilian Muhn and Thomas Rauter, and NYU’s Gurpal Sran put consumer attitudes to the test. In an experimental survey, they find that companies’ ESG disclosures had little impact on customer spending.
The researchers worked with Numerator, a US market-research company that administers consumer surveys. Numerator tracks respondents’ purchases in stores and online, making it possible to match survey results with spending habits.
Leonelli, Muhn, Rauter, and Sran collected information from more than 24,000 survey participants, initially asking what factors most influence their purchase decisions. “By far, the two most important purchase considerations are product quality and price,” the researchers write. While survey participants said they also consider ESG issues such as working conditions and carbon footprint, these factors ranked much lower.
The researchers also asked participants directly whether they prefer to buy from “ESG-responsible” businesses. Survey respondents had a moderate preference for purchasing from such companies, but 35 percent of participants said they didn’t have information about brands’ ESG activities.
This prompted the researchers to put that information right in front of them. They used survey respondents’ purchase history from Numerator to build each participant an individualized portfolio of 15 products—some of which the participant had previously bought, and some of which were substitutes for those products.
The information in the profiles varied, with different versions randomly assigned to respondents. Some profiles contained information about the company’s ESG performance; some linked to the company’s ESG report; and some contained information not related to ESG, such as financial data or product reviews.