Hiding in the Crowd : Corporate Climate Lobbying Under Investor and Consumer Pressure

Across the globe, investors and consumers have become concerned about climate change. With this concern comes a heightened interest in the climate conduct of large firms, including their lobbying activities. In this dissertation, I examine how companies adjust their lobbying practices to these new pressures. I argue that one important way in which companies react to potential consumer and investor scrutiny is to adjust the observability of their lobbying. Less climate-friendly firms shift away from lobbying by themselves into industry associations. Lobbying through associations complicates the attribution of positions and distributes the potential blame for lobbying activity across all firms in the sector. As a result, stakeholders are more reluctant to punish individual firms for association lobbying on climate change. While this logic makes lobbying through associations a potent tool to obfuscate, it also makes association lobbying a poor strategy for those who want to claim credit for and advertise their green positions. Therefore, companies with greener climate preferences than their competitors will react to consumer and investor pressure by taking more lobbying positions individually. This logic implies that investor and consumer pressure on climate lobbying could lead companies to shift their lobbying strategies rather than their positions. I test this argument by investigating the example of climate lobbying in the European Union. The first set of empirical chapters provides observational and survey experimental evidence of consumer and investor reactions to information on lobbying. The second set of empirical chapters presents quantitative and qualitative evidence of firms’ strategic choice to lobby individually or collectively.