Séminaire

Communication Strategies of Non-Governmental Organizations: Theory and Evidence

Matthieu Glachant (Mines ParisTech)

10 octobre 2016, 11h00–12h15

Toulouse

Salle MS 003

Environment Economics Seminar

Résumé

We develop a theory of constrained communication about corporate social behavior between a NGO and an imperfectly informed stakeholder. We seek to understand when and why the NGO reveals socially-beneficial activities (good news) or socially detrimental ones (bad news). The model provides two main insights: 1) In a given situation, the NGO falls into the extremes, emitting either good news only or bad news only; 2) the more severe the communication constraint (limited resources, airtime, or stakeholder attention), the more likely the NGO emits bad news. We then provide evidence supporting our theory in an extensive panel data set of news published by 634 NGOs between 2002 and 2014.