Regulatory Shaming and the Climate Crisis

Regulation by shaming companies through public ratings and rankings, press ‎releases, social media posts, product labels, and online databases has become ‎widespread across diverse regulatory fields. Regulators increasingly rely on ‎shaming practices to denounce employers responsible for occupational safety ‎incidents on X (formerly Twitter), highlight firms’ environmental ‎infringements through press releases, and condemn unethical conduct by ‎pharmaceutical companies through public blacklists.‎ Generally, regulatory shaming involves regulators publicizing instances of illegal, ‎inappropriate, or morally contested corporate behavior, as well as negative ‎corporate characteristics, in ways that draw on firms’ reliance on social license. It ‎refers to the intentional publication of corporate misdeeds in a manner designed to ‎convey a negative evaluative message to the public, thereby encouraging ‎compliance with mandatory legal norms and, in some cases, the voluntary ‎adoption of “above-compliance” standards. By mobilizing reputational ‎sensitivities, regulatory shaming invites relevant audiences to alter their behavior, ‎discourse, or attitudes toward the targeted entity and to engage in disapproval, ‎criticism, condemnation, protest, boycott, or other forms of social, legal, and ‎political action.‎ A growing body of empirical and theoretical research has emphasized shaming’s ‎potential advantages as a regulatory tool, including its effectiveness in inducing ‎corporate compliance and in promoting adherence to norms beyond formal legal ‎requirements. For instance, the “shock-and-shame cycle” theory suggests that the ‎greater the shock created by information-based schemes, the higher the likelihood ‎that the policy will motivate people to act. It has also been argued that ‎corporations suffer substantial reputational losses from naming-and-shaming, ‎especially when they are exposed for defrauding and deceiving stakeholders. ‎Shaming has also been described as a comparatively low-cost and rapid alternative ‎to command-and-control regulation, as it relies primarily on communicative ‎mechanisms—conveying information, beliefs, and ideas—often through digital ‎media channels. Against this backdrop, can shaming be utilized to fight climate change? In what ways does governmental publication of climate misdeeds strategically erode a firm’s "social license" to motivate compliance and "above-compliance" behaviors? Can information-based "shaming" tools provide a more agile and rapid alternative to traditional command-and-control regulation in the face of the urgent climate crisis and the failures of climate law, regulation, and governance? What procedural safeguards are necessary to balance the effectiveness of climate shaming with legal fairness, especially when targeting morally contested but technically legal corporate actions?