Advertising and Environmental Stewardship: Evidence from the BP Oil Spill

This paper explores whether private markets can incentivize environmental stewardship. We examine the consumer response to the 2010 BP oil spill and test how BP’s investment in the 2000–2008 “Beyond Petroleum” green advertising campaign affected this response. We find evidence consistent with consumer punishment: BP station margins and volumes declined by 2.9 cents per gallon and 4.2 percent, respectively, in the month after the spill. However, pre-spill advertising significantly dampened the price response, and may have reduced brand switching by BP stations. These results indicate that firms may have incentives to engage in green advertising without investments in environmental stewardship. (JEL D12, D83, G31, L71, M37, Q53, Q56)

“Down Here We Rely on Fishing and Oil”: Work Identity and Fishers’ Responses to the BP Oil Spill Disaster

Survey research on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has documented both short-term and longer term effects of the spill and chemical agents on physical, mental, and environmental health, but less is known about how individuals living in and around affected areas make sense of the oil spill disaster. Prior research on disaster describes how people make sense of these events through social, political, and relational processes, yet have not explored the mediating role that work identity might play in the sense-making process. Using in-depth interviews with Louisiana shrimp fishers, I show how interpretations of the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill and its aftermath are fundamentally grounded in work identity. Findings indicate fishers recognize the role BP played in their ongoing health and environmental problems related to the spill. At the same time, they generally view BP as favorable and hold optimistic views regarding their abilities to continue to fish in grounds where they find evidence of the oil spill. Work identity filters how these fishers make sense of their experience and limits the range of responses available to them. This project, thus, centers work within research on the subjective experience of disaster, and further contributes to understanding the socially constructed nature of disaster perceptions and responses.

Environmental disclosures and changes in firm value: new evidence from the BP oil spill

Purpose The purpose of this study is to use a sample of oil and gas firms and examine the relationship between environmental disclosure in the USA Form 10-K and the stock market reaction after the BP oil spill. Design/methodology/approach The study focused on three important time periods associated with the oil spill: the time period beginning with the explosion on April 20, 2010 and ending August 5, 2010, one day after BP permanently sealed the oil leak; the period beginning with the explosion on April 20 and ending with the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 22; and the period associated with President Obama’s first public comments on the oil spill and his administration’s ban on oil drilling, i.e. April 29-30 and May 3. Findings The results show a negative relationship between environmental disclosure and stock market reaction. Social implications The findings of a negative association could be the result of higher disclosure by firms with more environmental risk because they indeed are riskier and/or they engage in “window dressing” to legitimize their operations and practices and maintain acceptance by society. Originality/value The results in this study run counter to a positive association documented in prior research studying the effects of environmental disasters.

MDL as Category

Multidistrict litigation (MDL) dominates the federal civil docket. MDL has been used to consolidate hundreds of thousands of cases, including with respect to asbestos, the BP oil spill, Johnson & Johnson baby powder, NFL concussions, opioids, and more. In recent years, MDL has attracted the attention of reformers and scholars, who have offered proposals for rules or practices that would apply to all MDLs, and to only MDLs. These proposals are premised on a fundamental error about what MDL is. Using quantitative and qualitative data, case studies, and interviews with judges, this Article demonstrates that reformers and scholars have made a categorization error with respect to MDL. MDL is not a uniform category of large civil cases demanding one-size-fits-all procedure. Proposals for MDL-specific rules, therefore, are misguided. Indeed, because such proposals would create incentives for parties to “procedure shop” into or out of MDL, they imperil horizontal equity and invite abuse. That said, MDL is a coherent category with respect to the way MDLs are created. Every MDL is created by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML), a group of seven judges handed picked by the Chief Justice, who have the nearly unconstrained authority to decide whether to consolidate cases and to which federal judge to assign them. Yet despite this unusual and highly consequential procedure, reformers and scholars have paid scant attention to the JPML. Having dispensed with the initial MDL categorization error, this Article examines the understudied role of the JPML and offers suggestions for JPML reform consistent with a clearer description of what MDL is.

“Land! Hold On! Just Hold On!”

This essay interrogates William Faulkner’s “Old Man” section of The Wild Palms (1939), with its depiction of the 1927 flood, alongside Houma filmmaker Monique Verdin’s documentary My Louisiana Love (2012), which recounts Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, to examine the ways that the two texts present ecological disaster in the Native South. In many cases, Faulkner takes liberties and makes mistakes in his use of Native history, but to catalogue his successes or failures means to remain fixed upon Faulkner’s tapestry alone, imagining that the “Native” runs through his fictional Yoknapatawpha like a single thread. Rather, this essay examines the ways in which Faulkner’s work forms part of a larger fabric of a region still deeply imbued with the concerns of indigenous land claim and how contemporary Indigenous artists represent this landscape.