Socially Responsible Behavior of Companies from the Young Generation Perspective – an Empiric Study from Four European Union Member States

Abstract

Background: Since adopting the Non-Financial Reporting Directive, companies have been required to report information on environmental, social, and employee matters. After adopting the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and its gradual transposition into the European Union (EU) Member States' national legislation, the Environmental Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting requirements are becoming stricter to ensure transparency and comparability of reported sustainability information, to prevent greenwashing, and to ensure that companies behave in a socially responsible manner to the environment, society, and governance, and report this information in the Sustainability Report.

Purpose: The paper aims to analyze how the young generation from four different EU member states perceives companies' socially responsible behavior and what importance they give to various attributes of corporate social responsibility.

Study design/methodology/approach: To meet the paper's purpose, a standard methodology of legislation and literature review was performed. Afterward, a questionnaire survey was conducted in which the attitudes of the young generation to the socially responsible behavior of companies were investigated. Software SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS programming language have been used for the analysis.

Findings/conclusions: The research results showed that the young generation perceives social responsibility in companies’ behavior and takes it as a competitive advantage in the market. The results, among others, showed which aspects of responsible business are the most important for the young generation. The young people were able to name socially responsible companies, and according to their responses, they would prefer to buy products or services from companies that behave responsibly to society and the environment, even if these products or services were more expensive.

Limitations/future research: The paper analyzes the attitudes only of the young generation which can be a limited factor in the research. More detailed analysis within all the age groups could bring different results. The number of respondents is another limitation.