From pathogens to pollution: The hidden link between disease and sustainability

When people are constantly getting sick, saving the environment can take a back seat. A new study shows that companies in countries with high disease rates drop their sustainability initiatives. Why do some firms embrace environmental sustainability while others remain reluctant? A new study by a research team, including Anna Jasinenko from the University of St.Gallen, suggests that understanding corporate sustainability may require looking beyond the firm and its institutions to the deeper ecological conditions in which organizations operate.

In their study, "Pathogen Stress Theory in Business Ethics: Bio-ecological Influences on Firms’ Environmental Sustainability Practices", the researchers wanted to see if the “pathogen stress” of countries would affect their companies’ sustainability strategies and investments. Pathogen stress refers to the prevalence of a broad spectrum of infectious disease that threaten human health and survival. 

The researchers sought to answer three main questions: Does the biological environment, specifically pathogen stress, impact whether businesses adopt environmentally sustainable practices? And if a negative link exists, what are the psychological mechanisms driving this behaviour among business decision-makers?  

Key findings

The project utilized data from nearly 20,000 businesses across 37 countries alongside a controlled scenario experiment to uncover several major findings. Companies located in regions with high pathogen stress are significantly less likely to adopt environmental practices (like energy upgrades or waste reduction).

The research team linked this finding to several factors:

• Disease prevalence triggers a short-term strategy. In areas with high disease rates, decision-makers focus more on day-to-day survival than on long-term environmental investments.
•     High pathogen stress creates an "ingroup trust bias". Leaders restrict their trust to a narrow, familiar inner circle to minimize risk of disease. Because sustainability requires broad, generalized trust in external entities (like strangers, NGOs, or global communities), this narrowing of trust stifles collective green action.

Up to this point, most business ethics research assumes green choices are driven mostly by money, local laws, or company characteristics, such as size or ownership structure. This paper proves that biological and ecological environments strongly influence human priorities and business strategies.

It also highlights a tragic loop. Biological threats and unhealthy living environments encourage populations to be short-sighted, which causes them to neglect the environment, which causes further environmental degradation that can ultimately worsen public health.

Guides to future policy action

The findings of this study should encourage policymakers understand that demanding expensive, long-term environmental compliance from businesses in highly vulnerable health regions might be ineffective without first fixing or cushioning their immediate health conditions

 In the end, the study highlights a difficult trade-off between health and sustainability. Communities facing immediate health threats may understandably prioritize short-term well-being and economic security, even when this makes long-term environmental investment more difficult. At the same time, delaying environmental action can create future costs for both human health and planetary well-being. The challenge, therefore, is not to ask which priority should win, but to recognize these competing pressures and design policies that make it possible to address urgent health needs without undermining longer-term environmental goals.

The study "Pathogen Stress Theory in Business Ethics: Bio-ecological Influences on Firms’ Environmental Sustainability Practices", written by Prof. Dr. Anna Jasinenko, University of St.Gallen, Prof. Dr. Steven A. Brieger, NEOMA Business School and Javad Ghaffari Feyzabadi, Grenoble Ecole de Management.