Does firms' carbon disclosure increase consumers' recycling willingness and firms' recycling performance?

Nowadays, firms are expected to actively respond and take actions to respond to global warming and carbon emissions reduction. As a part of a circular economy, recycling improves waste management and reduces carbon emissions for firms. In the development of firms' strategies, the problem of enhancing the recycling performance becomes a challenge. This paper explores how carbon disclosure influences firms' recycling performance from consumers' purposive inference of firms' recycling behaviors. First, based on a sample of 442 firms' data, we demonstrate that firms' carbon disclosure increases firms' recycling performance. To further explain this effect from the consumer's point of view, two online experiments (N1 = 445 and N2 = 433) show that firms' carbon disclosure increases consumers' recycling willingness, as it acts as an environmental appeal that raises consumers' communal intention inference about firms' recycling and thus enhances consumers' recycling willingness. Furthermore, we find that economic incentives do not increase consumers' recycling willingness. Our study suggests that firms should be cautious in using economic incentives when developing strategies to improve recycling performance and actively improve their carbon disclosures. Carbon disclosure can be used as an environmental appeal to increase consumers' recycling willingness and firms' recycling performance. It is also important to note that these findings have practical implications for governments, policy-making authorities, and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The results of our study contribute to the literature on firms' recycling performance in circular economy (CE) and carbon disclosure from a theoretical perspective. © 2022 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.