TY - JOUR

T1 - What makes businesses commit to nature conservation?

AU - Krause, Marlen S.

AU - Droste, Nils

AU - Matzdorf, Bettina

N1 - Funding Information: German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Grant/Award Number: 01LC1315A Funding information Funding Information: M.S.K. and B.M. thank Prof. Dr. Michael Braun and Dr. Ines Schaurer from the GESIS?Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany for their expert consultancy regarding the questionnaire design. M.S.K is grateful for the Department of Political Science at Lund University to host her research stay for the purpose of joint data analysis with N.D. Open access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Funding Information: The research was conducted as part of the AgoraNatura research and implementation project. The project is supported by the joint funding initiative ‘Research for the Implementation of the National Biodiversity Strategy’ by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), as well as the BMU's ‘Federal Programme on Biological Diversity’ (grant number 01LC1315A).

PY - 2021/2/1

Y1 - 2021/2/1

N2 - To halt the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, various actors including companies need to engage, but it is not yet clear what drives voluntary business commitments. We explore leverage points that might increase corporate action for conservation. We apply a structural equation model based on the theory of planned behaviour to analyse data from 618 German companies, collected through an online-survey in 2019. We show that a favourable attitude, driven by perceived business relevance and benefit prospects, fosters engagement. Perceived difficulties, such as lacking finances and knowledge, hinder the engagement. Customers, employees and the general public are presently the only stakeholder groups that drive corporate conservation engagement. Nevertheless, the expectation levels of virtually all stakeholders were found to be quite low and as such inadequate for the ecological crisis we face. We discuss how political will and goal setting can encourage more widespread business support for the natural environment.

AB - To halt the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, various actors including companies need to engage, but it is not yet clear what drives voluntary business commitments. We explore leverage points that might increase corporate action for conservation. We apply a structural equation model based on the theory of planned behaviour to analyse data from 618 German companies, collected through an online-survey in 2019. We show that a favourable attitude, driven by perceived business relevance and benefit prospects, fosters engagement. Perceived difficulties, such as lacking finances and knowledge, hinder the engagement. Customers, employees and the general public are presently the only stakeholder groups that drive corporate conservation engagement. Nevertheless, the expectation levels of virtually all stakeholders were found to be quite low and as such inadequate for the ecological crisis we face. We discuss how political will and goal setting can encourage more widespread business support for the natural environment.

KW - biodiversity

KW - corporate responsibility

KW - ecosystem services

KW - structural equation modelling

KW - sustainable development

KW - theory of planned behaviour

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85093651873&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/bse.2650

DO - 10.1002/bse.2650

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85093651873

VL - 30

SP - 741

EP - 755

JO - Business Strategy and the Environment

JF - Business Strategy and the Environment

SN - 0964-4733

IS - 2

ER -