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Registration

Field Before After
Trial Status in_development completed
Last Published October 23, 2025 07:03 AM June 18, 2026 08:13 AM
Study Withdrawn No
Intervention Completion Date October 24, 2025
Data Collection Complete Yes
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization) 8
Was attrition correlated with treatment status? No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations 3,119
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms Absolute Emissions: 581, Relative Emissions: 578, Historic Emissions (30%): 297, Household Equivalent Emissions: 296, Incentivised Version: 296, Historic Emissions 3%: 288, Real Company Names: 199, Corporate Financial Data: 584
Is there a restricted access data set available on request? Yes
Restricted Data Contact [email protected]
Program Files No
Data Collection Completion Date October 24, 2025
Is data available for public use? No
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Papers

Field Before After
Paper Abstract We investigate whether individuals correctly interpret corporate sustainability disclosures using a pre-registered survey experiment. We provide novel evidence that individuals can meaningfully differentiate emissions of firms along a greenness scale, even though their assessments exhibit a central tendency bias. This leads to overestimation of greenness among browner firms and underestimation among greener firms, with the bias disproportionately stronger for greener firms. We observe this bias even among finance professionals and sustainability experts. As a result, firms' financial incentives to invest in emissions reductions may be attenuated. However, we also demonstrate that some disclosure design features improve individuals' differentiation ability.
Paper Citation Fabisik, Kornelia and Rink, Sebastian, Objective vs. Perceived Corporate Greenness: Do Individuals Understand Corporate Sustainability Information? (January 31, 2026). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6342498 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6342498
Paper URL https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6342498
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