When Climate Becomes Material: Generation Z's Social Media Addiction and Stakeholder Pressure on Firms

ABSTRACT

As climate change increasingly influences firms' strategic priorities, it is important to develop a deeper understanding of how emerging stakeholder groups form perceptions of environmental urgency. Generation Z is beginning to enter professional and consumer roles, making it an emerging stakeholder group. Its members are likely to play a growing role in shaping which sustainability issues firms perceive as salient. This study examines the microfoundational processes through which climate‐related behavioral intentions, interpreted as signals of future stakeholder pressure, are formed among Generation Z business students in the Western Balkans. We used data from 441 respondents to estimate a moderated mediation model using Hayes PROCESS Model 15. In the model, EECCI functions as a mediator between the pro‐environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions, whereas SMA moderates both the direct and indirect pathways. The findings show that the direct effect of attitudes becomes weaker at higher SMA levels, whereas the indirect effect through EECCI becomes stronger. These findings suggest that climate‐related stakeholder signaling among Generation Z depends less on stable value orientations and more on urgency appraisals conditioned by digital attention environments. The study contributes to the literature on stakeholder salience and dynamic materiality by identifying attention‐based conditioning as a mechanism shaping the formation of stakeholder urgency signals.