We study the impact of an online market’s policy (environmental policy) offering entrepreneurs the option to disclose their environmental engagement on entrepreneurship outcomes, using Kickstarter as a laboratory. Following the policy’s implementation, 32.4% of entrepreneurs opted to disclose their environmental commitments. Using the passage of the environmental policy as an instrument, we show that environmental commitment improves funding outcomes, with the funding success rate increasing by 13.2% and the pledged funding ratio by 8.7%. Environmental commitment also attracts more environmentally conscious backers and brings in new backers, which likely contributes to these improved outcomes. However, environmental commitment does not have a material impact on the ultimate project success rate and significantly delays project delivery. Overall, the evidence suggests that Kickstarter’s nudge policy encourages entrepreneurs’ environmental engagement and helps them expand access to environmentally conscious backers by internalizing backers’ environmental preferences.

Human capital is a major impetus for technological innovation. We examine the relation between the technological dimension of product market competition and the disclosure of skill requirements in job postings. On the one hand, technological competition may raise the urgency of recruiting tech talent and make firms provide more specific skill requirements. On the other hand, technological competition can increase the proprietary costs of skill requirement disclosure. Using technological peer pressure as a measure of technological competition, we find that firms facing intense technological competition provide more specific skill requirements for tech positions, suggesting that the disclosure benefits outweigh the proprietary costs when firms face pressure to innovate. The effect of technological peer pressure is more pronounced among firms that make only incremental innovations and less pronounced among firms that rely on trade secrets or have greater industry peer presence in close geographical proximity. Our study documents a distinct relationship between technological competition and voluntary disclosure targeted to labor market participants.