CEOs' and directors’ perspective towards environmental sustainability and climate change

Abstract

Understanding leadership perspectives on environmental issues is fundamental in an era where corporate sustainability is a global priority. This study explores the views of CEOs and Directors on environmental sustainability and climate change, investigating how their demographic and professional characteristics are associated with their sentiments. By analyzing 761 comments from the World Economic Forum LinkedIn page, we applied a BERT sentiment analysis and BERTopic modeling to evaluate the sentiments and identify relevant topics. Additionally, Heteroskedasticity-Robust Standard Errors were used to estimate the relationships between variables. Our results reveal that Directors and female leaders exhibit more positive attitudes toward sustainability, and a significant correlation exists between a leader's number of followers and their positive sentiment toward environmental issues. These findings broadly analyze decision-makers’ perspectives, supporting strategies for effective engagement plans and policies for these influential stakeholders.