Employees’ Perception of Climate Change and Its Impact on Business Competitiveness

Karmen Erjavec – University of Novo mesto, Na Loko 2, 8000 Novo mesto, Slovenia

Abstract

Climate change in the form of extreme weather events is becoming more frequent and severe, and populations across Europe are more affected by droughts and floods. All this affects workers’ perceptions of climate change and how they assess its impact on the competitiveness of the companies they work for. A survey of Slovenian workers (N = 212) examined the associations between reported concerns about climate changes concern and perceptions of its impact on business competitiveness. In regression analyses, exposure was associated with greater concern about climate change and negative per­ceptions of business competitiveness. Our study suggests that workers’ aware­ness of climate-related exposures in their local environment, along with per­sonal exposures, is associated with increased concern about climate change and its negative impact on business competitiveness. As sustainable competi­tiveness needs well-informed workers, our findings suggest that policies aimed at raising awareness of climate concerns and their impact on business aware­ness should take into account workers’ perceptions.

LIMEN Conference

8th International Scientific-Business Conference – LIMEN 2022 – Leadership, Innovation, Management and Economics: Integrated Politics of Research – CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, Hybrid (EXE Budapest Center, Budapest, Hungary), December 1, 2022,

LIMEN Conference proceedings published by the Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans, Belgrade, Serbia

LIMEN Conference 2022 Conference proceedings: ISBN 978-86-80194-66-0, ISSN 2683-6149, DOI:  https://doi.org/10.31410/LIMEN.2022

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission. 

Suggested citation

Erjavec, K. (2022). Employees’ Perception of Climate Change and Its Impact on Business Competitiveness. In V. Bevanda (Ed.), International Scientific-Business Conference – LIMEN 2022: Vol 8. Conference proceedings (pp. 211-216). Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans.  https://doi.org/10.31410/LIMEN.2022.211

References

Chygryn, O., Rosokhata, A., Rybina, O. & Stoyanets, N. (2021). Green competitiveness: the evaluation of concept formation. E3S Web of Conferences 234, https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/20213400004  

Graham, H., Harrison, A. & Lampard, P. (2022). Public Perceptions of Climate Change and Its Health Impacts: Taking Account of People’s Exposure to Floods and Air Pollution. Inter­national Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(4), 2246. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042246  

Hermundsdottir, F. & Aspelund, A. (2021). Sustainability innovations and firm competitive­ness: A review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 280 (1), 124715. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124715  

Lopez-Torres, G. C., Montejano-García, S., Alvarez-Torres, F. J. & Perez-Ramos, M.d.J. (2021). Sustainability for competitiveness in firms – a systematic literature review. Measur­ing Business Excellence, ahead-of-print. https://doi-org.nukweb.nuk.uni-lj.si/10.1108/ MBE-02-2021-0023

Potter, M. (1991). Green Competitiveness. New York Times, 5 April 1991, http://worldpolicy. org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Porter-1991-Green-Competitiveness.pdf

Toreti, A., Bavera, D., Avanzi, F., Cammalleri, C. &De Felice, M. (2022). Drought in Europe July 2022. Publication Office of the European Union, https://doi.org/10.2760/014884 

United Nations Environment Programme. (2022). http://www.cprac.org/en/sustainable/production /cleaner/green-competitiveness