SME managers’ motivations to engage with climate change: the role of values and emotions

In this paper we look at the motivations of managers of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage with climate change. The paper reports on an exploratory, qualitative study with managers of nine environmentally proactive SMEs in the East of England. The aim of the research was to study what motivated managers of SMEs to engage with environmental issues in general and with climate change in particular and how they constructed the importance of climate change with respect to their own business practice. We found that managers of environmental pro-active SMEs were actively interested in the climate change debate, constructed climate change holistically within a range of wider environmental and social concerns. We found that their motivations to engage with environmental and climate change issues were based on values as much, if not more so, than on business strategic and externally legitimacy considerations and. Values and emotional responses interacted with knowledge and information, in as much as they encouraged respondents to act upon the climate change information gathered through a variety of sources.