Equitable Opportunity Conference · McGill Desautels · May 15–16, 2026

Strategic Identity Disclosure

Why Business Owners Disclose Marginalized Identities

Questions, pushback, and wild ideas welcome.

Kyle Emory McCullers · Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

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The decision in the data

Three businesses, same platform, different choices

No identity tags

Brooklyn Blooms

Does not disclose any identity

Black-owned

Brooklyn Tea

Discloses race

Black-owned LGBTQ+ Friendly Women-owned Latino-owned

The Lit Bar

Discloses race, gender, and ethnicity

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Liquid Assets · 504 Nostrand Ave · Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

Before May 2019

Disclosure July 2021

Black-owned ↑

After June 2022

Source: Google Street View

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The core tension

The same disclosure simultaneously attracts and repels

Black-owned businesses · 2020

"How The Black Lives Matter Movement Boosted Local Black-Owned Businesses"

GBH · 2021

⟷

"Black businesses still face systemic racism — even from well-meaning customers"

Washington Post · 2020

Asian-owned businesses · COVID-19

"The Best AAPI-Owned Businesses to Shop Right Now"

NBC News Select

⟷

"Reports of Anti-Asian hate crimes rose nearly 150% in major U.S. cities"

CBS News · 2021

Palestinian-owned businesses · 2023

"A Palestinian-owned business guide to show solidarity"

USA Today · 2023

⟷

"Jewish groups call for boycott of pro-Palestinian businesses"

Forward · 2023

Latino-owned businesses · 2024–2025

"Support Lake Street Latino businesses as immigration fears keep customers away"

Star Tribune · 2025

⟷

"Hispanic businesses in Montgomery feeling 'hunted' after triple-slaying"

NBC News · 2024

The solidarity signal is made necessary by discrimination exposure. Visibility attracts aligned customers and invites retaliation simultaneously.

Some find gains (Kim & Liu, 2025) · Others find clear penalties (Nunley et al., 2011; Doleac & Stein, 2013; Younkin & Kuppuswamy, 2018) · Some support is symbolic (Sharma, Frake & Watson, 2025)

Social identities have long been grounds for discrimination, marginalization, and even violence, and were historically concealed from potential consumers — Du Bois (1935) · Bonilla-Silva (1997) · Acker (2006) · Phillips & Kim (2009)

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Research Question

"Why would a business owner voluntarily disclose a marginalized identity?"

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Theoretical Positioning

Our priors are informed by two literatures

Identity Theory

Concealment is the default — disclosure has a cost to be managed

Goffman (1963)

Group membership is claimed when it enables favorable comparisons

Tajfel & Turner (1979)

A Black-sounding name costs 50% of callbacks

Bertrand & Mullainathan (2004)

Explains how stigmatized identities are managed — not when disclosure becomes a competitive signal.

Competitive Strategy

Advantage comes from resources that are valuable, rare, and hard to imitate

Porter (1980) · Barney (1991) · Wernerfelt (1984)

Disclosure is a signal — its value depends on what the receiver believes about the sender

Spence (1973)

Strategic positioning has asymmetric, context-dependent returns — the same choice attracts some stakeholders and exposes the firm to others

Alcácer & Chung (2007)

Explains when identity produces advantage — takes the disclosure decision itself as given.

Identity theory explains how stigmatized identities are managed. Strategy explains when resources produce advantage. This paper asks the question that precedes both: when does an owner treat their own identity as a resource at all?

Performance outcomes

Aneja, Luca & Reshef (2025)

Platform disclosure boosts foot traffic and orders — returns concentrated in Democratic, lower-bias areas.

Performance outcomes

Sharma, Frake & Watson (2025)

BLM drove symbolic support for Black-owned businesses but no meaningful increase in revenue.

Responds to calls to center marginalized entrepreneurs in management research — Phillips et al. (ROB, 2024); Phillips & Ranganathan (ASQ, 2025).

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Theory — Framework

Disclosure is a two-stage decision

Stage 1 — All three required

A

Marginalized identity

Owner holds a stigmatized or discriminated identity

B

Positioning discretion

Owner-operator with direct agency over how the business presents

C

Legitimacy beliefs

Views identity as a potentially legitimate competitive dimension

Structural — any absent condition forecloses disclosure before Stage 2 is reached.

→ only if
all met

Stage 2 — Either suffices

J₁

Bounded solidarity

Co-ethnic in-group reciprocity · county Black pop. share

OR

J₂

Generalized solidarity

Values-aligned ally support · state Dem. vote margin

OR

K

Identity commitment

Moral obligation independent of market calculation

Perceived — owners differ even when structural conditions are identical.

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Theory — Mechanisms

Two solidarity structures activate disclosure

J₁ — Bounded Solidarity

Co-ethnic in-group reciprocity. Owners perceive that neighbors who share the same identity will extend preferential patronage.

Portes & Sensenbrenner, AJS (1993)

Ideal statement

I know my neighborhood will show up.

Proxy: county Black population share

J₂ — Generalized Solidarity

Values-aligned out-group allies. Owners perceive the broader community embraces equity norms, reducing disclosure risk and adding cross-group demand.

Greenberg & Mollick (2017)

Ideal statement

The community broadly values what I'm doing.

Proxy: Democratic vote margin

H1

Disclosure increases with Black population share. (J₁)

H2

Disclosure increases with Democratic vote margin. (J₂)

H3

The J₁ effect attenuates in Democratic counties — J₂ substitutes for J₁ when ally demand is already active. (Partial substitution — the paper's decisive test)

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Data + Results

Google Maps + U.S. Census + Presidential Election Results

4.99MU.S. business listings

3,144Counties covered

Sept. 2021Cross-section date

Identity tag system — opt-in, permanent until removed, publicly visible

Black-owned Women-owned LGBTQ+-owned Latino-owned Asian-owned Veteran-owned Indigenous-owned Disabled-owned

Google's identity tag system allows business owners to voluntarily self-report attributes. Tags appear as colored pill labels on the listing. Approximately 14,000 (0.28% of all listings; ~8.7% of 161,000 Census-identified Black-owned employer businesses) use the Black-owned attribute.

Unit of analysis: business listings geocoded to county. Outcome: Black-owned tag (0/1). Census RDC application in progress for county-level Black-owned business counts — the correct at-risk denominator.

Scope: Voluntary platform disclosure — theoretically distinct from MWBE certification or government-contracting-driven disclosure, both of which carry strong and interpretable selection pressures not present here.

US Census — ACS 5-Year Estimates

County-level Black population share and poverty rate. Anchors the bounded solidarity proxy and serves as a primary control.

MIT Election Lab — Presidential Returns

County-level Democratic vote margin, 2020 presidential election. Operationalizes generalized solidarity.

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Theory — Predictions

The framework makes distinct predictions by quadrant

Low Black Pop.

High Black Pop.

High Dem.

J₁ weak + J₂ active J₂ provides some activation → lower-moderate disclosure

J₁ active + J₂ active Both triggers available → highest predicted disclosure

Low Dem.

J₁ weak + J₂ inactive Neither trigger active → lowest predicted disclosure

J₁ active + J₂ inactive Only bounded solidarity → moderate disclosure

H3 predicts that J₂ is an alternative activation pathway — in Democratic counties, co-ethnic density matters less because generalized solidarity is already active.

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Data + Results

H1 ✓ H2 ✓ H3 ✓ — Solidarity structures predict disclosure

Quadrant finding

Low Black Pop

High Black Pop

High Dem

0.12%J₂ only

0.36%J₁ + J₂

Low Dem

0.08%Neither

0.12%J₁ only

Q1 is 4.5× Q3. J₁ alone barely moves the needle — political context is the multiplier.

Main regression — logit, SEs clustered by county

DV: Black-owned tag	H1 Bounded	H2 Generalized	H3 Interaction	H4 Discriminant
Black pop. share (%)	0.090***	—	0.140***	—
	(0.010)		(0.023)
Dem. vote margin	—	0.015***	—	—
		(0.002)
Dem. majority (binary)	—	—	0.481***	—
			(0.076)
Black pop. × Dem. majority	—	—	−0.090**	—
			(0.031)
Veteran-led × Dem. majority	—	—	—	0.002
				(0.022)
State + industry FE, controls	✓	✓	✓	✓
N (businesses)	152,794

*** p<.001 ** p<.01. H4 interaction p=.93 — discriminant validity confirmed.

The negative H3 coefficient is the key result: in Democratic counties, J₂ is already active — so the marginal contribution of co-ethnic density shrinks. Bounded and generalized solidarity are partial substitutes, not complements.

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Denominator Validation

Anomaly, new data, revised explanation

01

Anomaly

Only 0.29% of Google Places businesses carry a Black-owned tag.

If this is a strategic decision, who is making it — and who could? There is no ground-truth denominator in the Google Places universe.

Committee challenge: the denominator problem has no obvious solution in the main data.

→

02

New Data

SBA PPP FOIA data: 11.7 million loan recipients, self-reported race at application.

776,414 unique Black-owned businesses provide a government-verified at-risk population. 10,009 match to Google Places listings.

True denominator: verified Black business owners who could have disclosed.

→

03

Revised Understanding

True rate: 7.5%. Political climate effect strengthens. Co-ethnic density disappears.

The pattern divergence demands explanation: county-level H1 reflects who is in the denominator, not a causal mechanism. The theory holds at the right level of analysis.

Abduction: anomaly → new data → stronger, more precise theory.

Abductive inference: the unexpected pattern (H1 vanishes; H2 strengthens) reveals that the county-level analysis captures selection into the denominator, not the causal mechanism of interest — pointing toward a multi-level theoretical account (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012).

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Denominator Validation · SBA PPP Data · N = 7,195

The political climate finding holds — and strengthens — in the verified sample

True at-risk population

Black-owned PPP borrowers

824K

↓ de-duplicated

Unique Black-owned businesses

776K

↓ matched to Google Places

With complete covariates

7,195

7.5% true disclosure rate

vs. 0.29% using all Google Places businesses as denominator

Disclosure rate by political climate quintile · verified Black-owned borrowers

State political climate (Most Republican → Most Democratic)

6.1%

6.4%

8.9%

7.3%

7.6%

Most
Rep. Swing Most
Dem.

✓ Directional increase · H2 holds in verified sample

When the denominator is verified Black-owned businesses, political climate is the primary structural driver of disclosure. The flat H1 pattern is a methodological insight: co-ethnic density predicts who is in the denominator — not who, among them, chooses to disclose.

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Extending the findings · 2021 → 2026

Disclosure isn't a one-time signal — it persists where solidarity is high

79.5%

Democratic counties

75.0%

Republican counties

4.5 pp gap
p < .05

Of 13,138 disclosers in 2021, 78.8% overall still disclosing in 2026. The same solidarity structures that activate disclosure sustain it.

What predicts retention?
Black population share (β=0.925, p<.001) and Democratic vote margin (β=0.608, p<.001) — the same solidarity structures that activate initial disclosure also sustain it. Extends H1 and H2 to persistence.

Where do owners drop off? Not the Deep South — structural thinness.

NH OR CO IA NM UT

Where co-ethnic and ally demand is too thin to sustain the signal, disclosure quietly lapses.

Drop-off correlates with both lower Black population share and lower Democratic margin (r ≈ −0.21, p<.0001 each) — consistent with the bounded and generalized solidarity mechanisms operating jointly on persistence, not just entry.

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Interview voices · Ann Arbor & Detroit Metro

The decision in owners' own words

"I didn't realize how radical it was to say, I'm creating a black space for black people by black people... my being here, even being a successful entrepreneur, was an act of resistance."

Entrepreneurship educator · Detroit Metro · K: identity as resistance

"I'm going to drive that angle. But then there's also the dangerous side — I'm Jewish, but I'm not going to drive on that... that can be dangerous for business."

Boutique owner · Ann Arbor · Same owner — opposite disclosure across two identities

"I want to win the blind taste test every time. I don't want people to be like, 'Yeah, I liked hers because she was a white girl from Michigan and I identify with that.' I don't care about that. I think that is a crutch to me."

Food & beverage owner · Ann Arbor · Product Purist — identity as competitive dimension, rejected

"When we opened we were only 26... Koreans would come in from the suburbs. It was like a cult of party Koreans. And it did play a big role."

Restaurant owner · Ann Arbor · J₁: bounded solidarity through co-ethnic visibility

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Contribution

So what?

Identity as a Conditional Strategic Resource

Theorizes the structural prerequisites for voluntary identity disclosure — separating Stage 1 (enabling conditions) from Stage 2 (activation triggers). Explains who enters the calculation, not just when it pays.

Solidarity as a Geographically Structured Mechanism

Bounded and generalized solidarity are distinct mechanisms — partial substitutes, not complements — that predict disclosure rates with 3–4× variation across U.S. counties.

Where this goes next

Census RDC

County-level Black-owned business counts — the correct at-risk denominator. Application submitted April 2026; awaiting review.

Companion Qualitative Study

In-depth interviews examining individual strategic orientations. Pilot interviews underway — Ann Arbor and Detroit Metro.

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Equitable Opportunity Conference · McGill Desautels · May 15–16, 2026

Thank You

Questions, pushback, and suggestions on theory, data, or framing are all welcome.

Kyle McCullers · University of Michigan Ross

kylemcc@umich.edu

I'd love to hear from you — on the theory, the data, or anything else.

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