Speaker: Professor Junhong Chu (Hong Kong University)
Title: Seeing Green Without Buying Green: Evidence from Amazon's Climate Pledge Friendly Program
Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Time: 4:30 PM – 5:50 PM
Venue: 90402

Abstract
The authors evaluate consumer responses to and the financial viability of corporate environmental initiatives using Amazon’s Climate Pledge Friendly (CPF) program, partnering with a leading Amazon seller which also operates a direct-to-consumer website. Using both within-platform and cross-platform propensity-score-weighted difference-in-differences designs, they estimate the CPF’s causal effects across stages of the purchase funnel and examine the mechanisms. They find that CPF significantly increases product page visits and order quantity, but not conversion rates, indicating that higher order volumes arise primarily through expanded exposure, not improved purchase likelihood. These patterns suggest that consumers value environmental attributes little at purchase. Consistent with this interpretation, they find that the traffic effect is driven by visual attention: The badge’s traffic-boosting impact attenuates as it becomes more prevalent in a category. In contrast, even with clearer environmental messaging, the badge does not increase purchase likelihood after page visit. Translating these effects into a product-level cost–benefit analysis and aggregating the results to the category level, the authors find that only one category exhibits statistically significant positive net profit. The results highlight the difficulty of turning sustainability-driven attention into profits and underscore the importance of category context in shaping the effectiveness of environmental labeling programs.