IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/spmain/hal-04350378.html

Climate-Conscious Bank Customers

Author

Listed:
  • Clément Mazet-Sonilhac

    (Bocconi University [Milan, Italy])

  • Jean-Stéphane Mésonnier

    (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre de recherche de la Banque de France - Banque de France)

Abstract

We study how retail depositors behave when their bank is publicly accused of contributing to climate change by funding fossil fuel companies. Using data on environmental NGO campaigns targeting French banks between 2010 and 2020, we construct a time-varying index of each bank's "brown" reputation. We combine this measure with granular data on household deposits to assess how such reputational shocks affect deposit demand. Sight deposits decline following negative publicity, and the effect becomes significantly stronger after a 2017 reform that removed transaction costs for switching checking accounts between banks. Last, using a large sample of new mortgage loans, we also show that browner banks face a relatively lower demand for housing loans and adjust by offering slightly lower loan rates. The results suggest that depositors act on their environmental preferences when frictions affecting bank mobility are low enough.

Suggested Citation

  • Clément Mazet-Sonilhac & Jean-Stéphane Mésonnier, 2026. "Climate-Conscious Bank Customers," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) hal-04350378, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-04350378
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-04350378v4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-04350378v4/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-04350378. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Contact - Sciences Po Department of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.