By Evan Sparks
Several years ago, I woke up to a mass email from a ridesharing app I used. (You’d recognize it.) The email was a message from the CEO stating that the company had made a major donation to support a cause that I find morally reprehensible. The cause was entirely unrelated to the company’s business, and it was unclear why this was so important that the company felt obliged to let every customer know.
I’m not one for boycotts, and I generally don’t seek out information on the political or social views of the companies I do business with. But to have something like this pushed in my face was more than I thought reasonable, and I closed my account with this app and haven’t used it since.
Taking a stand on a controversial issue as a CEO or as a corporation can be a fraught issue. On the one hand, it may be personally important to you, to your employees, or perhaps to your bottom line. It may win loyalty from customers, but it may also alienate them too.
Public support for CEO activism is slipping, according to new research from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hoover Institution. Approximately 55% of Americans believe CEOs should be outspoken on issues, down from 65% in 2018.
Support for CEO activism fell across all demographic categories, although it remained strongest among Democratic voters and Generation Z (those under 30).
Likewise, the share of Americans who believe businesses should take public stances on controversial issues has fallen in 2026, according to the Bentley-Gallup Business in Society Survey. The share of Americans who believe businesses should be more vocal ticked back down to 47%, in line with the longer-term trend.
Support for public stances declined across most demographics. Less than half of independents (and less than a third of Republicans) want businesses to take public stances, but while 62% of Democrats say they do believe businesses should take public stances on issues, that number was down nearly 10 percentage points from the year before.
“Activism clearly has
an impact on brand
perception.”
Where corporate activism is welcome
The public is more supportive of CEOs being vocal about social, environmental and political issues that affect their businesses and their employees, with 76% in support — up from 72% in 2018. Americans were most likely to applaud CEOs for speaking up about clean air and water, sustainability, renewable energy, healthcare, climate change and artificial intelligence. They were most likely to want CEOs to keep quiet on religion, politics, abortion, gender issues, war and LGBTQ rights. Sustainability was the only issue where the public was more supportive of an outspoken CEO than in 2018.
Similarly, the Bentley-Gallup survey showed that issues where business had the strongest support for being vocal were free speech (58%); climate change (58%); diversity, equity and inclusion (57%); mental health (56%); and healthcare (54%).
The most charged third rails — the issues with the lowest support for businesses making public statements on them — were religion (16%), abortion (22%), endorsement of political candidates (23%) and international conflicts (33%).
A majority of employees continued to believe their companies should not take public stances on controversial issues, with just four topics (mental health, DEI, healthcare issues and free speech) commanding majority support among employees.
Risks and rewards
The general public appears likely to reward companies whose CEO is vocal on issues they agree with, with 75% saying they would be more likely to purchase a product or service from a company when the CEO speaks out about an issue — up from 72% in 2018.
But the reverse is true as well, and the negative polarization is rising: 76% say they would be less likely to purchase from a company whose CEO spoke out on an issue they disagree with, up 14 percentage points from 2018. Sixty-two percent of respondents can think of a product or service they use less because they disagreed with a CEO’s public stance, whereas only 40% can think of a product or service they’re using more because of a CEO’s stance. (Whatever the calculation, consumers are paying more attention, because these figures are roughly double what they were in 2018.)
“Activism clearly has an impact on brand perception,” says Stanford professor Amit Seru. “The asymmetry is especially notable: Substantially more respondents can identify a product they use less because of activism than one they use more. This suggests that corporate advocacy may create more salient downside risk than upside opportunity, particularly when the position is unrelated to the company’s business.”
