We investigate whether firms adjust earnings-based incentives in CEO compensation after influential media expose their involvement in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) incidents. We capture earnings-based incentives using the target payout linked to earnings and the value-adjusted weight of earnings metrics in CEO compensation. We find that firms involved in ESG incidents significantly reduce earnings-based incentives in CEO compensation. These firms replace earnings-based incentives with nonfinancial and ESG performance-based incentives in CEO compensation. When categorizing firms into consumer- sensitive versus less consumer-sensitive industries, we find that less consumer-sensitive businesses choose to reduce the importance of earnings in CEO compensation following ESG incidents. Finally, we show that these adjustments to performance incentives are received favorably by the market and lower the risk of future ESG incidents. Overall, our results suggest that firms’ efforts to focus CEOs’ attention on ESG goals in the wake of ESG incidents improve the efficiency of CEO contracting.