Information communication about environmental quality by markets and NGOs ; Communication d'informations sur la qualité environnementale par les marchés et les ONG

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the question of the information transmitted to consumers by the markets and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) on the environmental quality of products. This work takes place in a context where, on one hand, consumers' awareness increase concerning this dimension, and on the other hand, firms increasingly display a social or environmental responsibility whose reality is often contested. The first paper investigates the role of price as a possible substitute channel of communication. The purpose is to examine how a green firm competing against a brown firm can solve the asymmetric information issue. For this purpose, we develop a simple vertically differentiated duopoly model where firms can signal their quality through prices. To represent an increasing pressure of the competition on the low-quality segment, we make the hypothesis that the brown good is sold at the marginal cost. The result is extreme: there do not exist any situations where the green firm can solve the asymmetric information issue. The second paper takes into account the informative role of NGOs concerning the type of firms. We are interested in how their informational behavior impacts the signaling strategy of firms. The interaction between the price signaling strategy of the firm and the information released by the NGO yield fruitful results concerning the path of green information.When consumers cannot verify corporate social goodwill, firms may be reluctant to uphold a pledge of social goodwill. We show how imperfect monitoring can mitigate this moral hazard problem. We augment the standard model of price signaling by allowing consumers to use the results of independent monitoring as a complementary source of information. Monitoring corrects for consumers' arbitrary beliefs. Before sending a price signal to consumers, firms pledge or not to invest in social goodwill.With no monitoring, firms do not abide by their pledges of social goodwill when they fail to send a credible signal via price.With monitoring, there ...