CORPORATE FINANCE
Tweeting about Sustainability: can Emotional Nowcasting discourage Greenwashing?

Tweeting about Sustainability: can Emotional Nowcasting discourage Greenwashing?

Dr. Andreas G. F. Hoepner / Savio Dimatteo / Joé Schaul / Pei-Shan Yu / Mirco Musolesi

Less than 100 firms worldwide report accurate greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, thousands of people are tweeting about climate change every day. How can this attention be converted into accurate action? We propose that sustainable data science might help. First, we differentiate between various types of corporate sustainability performance data and highlight the challenge that corporate greenwashing and a potential lack of financial independence of the assessor from the assessed poses for these data sets. Second, we adopt Lampos and Christianini’s (2012) concept of emotional nowcasting with two case studies of an emotionally non-ambivalent context. Finally, we discuss the potential for emotional nowcasting to mitigate the pandemic of greenwashing currently experienced in sustainability communication.

Weniger als hundert Firmen weltweit berichten präzise über ihre Treibhausgasemission, während tausende