Assist. Prof. Andreas G. B. Ziegler

Consumer Perceptions of Corporate Value Communication

While visiting CES, Andreas Ziegler will work primarily with Sili Zhang on their joint project: “Consumer Perceptions of Corporate Value Communication.” Firms increasingly advertise their support for social values to consumers – through sustainability claims, diversity pledges, or public stances on political and social issues – but when is such communication credible, and when is it cheap talk? Using an incentivized online experiment, the project studies how consumers interpret these endorsements: whether they recognize strategic motives, and whether costly endorsements serve as credible signals. It also asks whether consumers are willing to pay a premium when buying from value-aligned sellers, and what drives these premia. The findings speak to the policy debate on greenwashing and to recent European disclosure regulation.

Mr. Ziegler is a behavioral and experimental economist. He studies how people process and respond to information in strategic environments – for example, on information design and persuasion, on how market institutions shape moral behavior, on preferences over allocation mechanisms such as ticketing platforms, and on information processing in open auctions. He also works on a behavioral agenda on off-path beliefs and strategic obliviousness.

Andreas G. B. Ziegler is an Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a Tinbergen Institute research master alumnus (2018) and received his PhD in Economics at the University of Amsterdam in 2024. Before joining the VU, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Essex.