Motivation crowding theory examines how external intervention may undermine intrinsic motivation. Earlier research has shown that intrinsic motivation plays a decisive role in fostering environmental performance of households and consumers, but that external pressures may “crowd out” the intrinsic motivations. Similar patterns could be expected in business organizations. However, only a few studies consider crowding effects of financial incentives on businesses’ intrinsic motivation to environmental responsibility, whereas none addresses the impact of external pressures from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and media, despite their prominent role. This study aims to address this gap by offering a mediation framework explaining how pressures from NGOs and media affect intrinsic motivation. Empirically, the paper adds to the scant empirical research by estimating a model on a sample of 4,364 enterprises from twelve European countries. We find that NGOs and media pressures increase financial benefits from environmental

The dataset consists of 13637 observations from 12 countries: UK, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, France, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden.

The file Data_NGOcrowding_archive.dta includes raw data as well as reworked data, Datapackage NGOcrowding_info.pdf includes a stem file with the commands used in stata for estimating the model. Additional documentation and metadata can be found in the file Data Report_NGOcrowding_JEPM_20211215.pdf