AAWE Working Paper No. 121 – Economics

While business sustainability has been defined as the protection of the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, we still have little understanding of how to facilitate investments in practices geared at long-term sustainability. In this paper we seek to understand the conditions that facilitate a long-term business perspective. We investigate how family ties to future generations can facilitate the adoption of sustainable practices. Using data from 248 wineries in the U.S. collected through a survey questionnaire, we show that ties to future generations, measured as the intention of the owner of the winery to pass down the winery to their children, positively impacts the adoption of sustainable certification. We also found that winery owners were motivated by both positive potential market outlook for sustainable wine and increase in quality of their product associated with certification, and that the market outlook motivation was stronger for higher levels of certification.