Navigating climate change: Climate change awareness and strategies in micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in a developing economy

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0327165 July 2, 2025 1 / 26 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Díaz Tautiva JA, Barros-Celume S, Lecuna A, Barragan-Rodriguez C (2025) Navigating climate change: Climate change awareness and strategies in micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in a developing economy. PLoS One 20(7): e0327165. https:// doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0327165 Editor: Tianheng Shu, Tsinghua University, CHINA Received: November 20, 2024 Accepted: June 10, 2025 Published: July 2, 2025 Copyright: © 2025 Díaz Tautiva et al . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data availability statement: The minimal anonymized dataset necessary to replicate the analysis is available in the following reposito- ry: (https://osf.io/fnymj/) with assigned DOI https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/FNYMJ. RESEARCH ARTICLE Navigating climate change: Climate change awareness and strategies in micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in a developing economy Julián Andrés Díaz Tautiva 1,2☯, Sebastian Barros-Celume 3☯*, Antonio Lecuna4‡, Camila Barragan-Rodriguez5‡ 1 Centro de Gestión y Economía Aplicada, Departamento de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas, Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas, Económicas y Administrativas, Universidad Católica de Temuco, Temuco, La Araucania, Chile, 2 SK Research, Oxford Business College, Oxford, United Kingdom,

3 Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas, Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Concepción, Biobío, Chile, 4 Katz School of Business, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado, United States of America, 5 Facultad de Economía y Negocios, Universidad Del Desarrollo, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. ‡ AL and CBR also contributed equally to this work. * sbarros@ucsc.cl Abstract Given the limited research on climate change (CC) awareness and strategies among micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), this study aims to address three key questions: To what extent are MSMEs aware of CC and decarbonization? How do MSMEs strategize to address CC and achieve carbon neutrality? What factors shape MSMEs’ attention to CC and decarbonization? Drawing on theoretical insights from the Attention-Based View, we analyze CC awareness and strategies among 1,453 Colombian ventures to identify common patterns and traits between them. Our findings reveal a significant gap in MSMEs’ understanding of essential concepts such as carbon neutrality, decarbonization, and the overall impacts of CC on their businesses. Moreover, the results indicate that most MSMEs exhibit greater awareness of CC-related strategies at the corporate practice level than those aimed at operational processes. On average, respondents estimate that achieving carbon- neutral emissions will take between five to twenty years. Based on our findings, we propose scholarly, managerial, and policy recommendations to enhance CC aware-

ness and promote effective CC-related strategies across MSMEs from different economic sectors.