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 responsibility, which in turn crowd in intrinsic motivation in enterprises.

动机拥挤理论研究外部干预如何破坏内在动机。早期的研究表明，内在动机在培养家庭和消费者的环境绩效方面起着决定性作用，但外部压力可能会“挤出”内在动机。在商业组织中可以预期类似的模式。然而，只有少数研究考虑了财务激励对企业承担环境责任的内在动机的拥挤效应，而没有一项研究涉及来自非政府组织 (NGO) 和媒体的外部压力的影响，尽管它们发挥了重要作用。本研究旨在通过提供一个中介框架来解释这一差距，解释来自非政府组织和媒体的压力如何影响内在动机。根据经验，该论文通过对来自 12 个欧洲国家的 4,364 家企业的样本进行估计，从而增加了缺乏的实证研究。我们发现非政府组织和媒体压力增加了环境责任带来的经济利益，这反过来又挤压了企业的内在动机。