When consumers learn to spot deception in advertising: testing a literacy intervention to combat greenwashing

Fernandes, Juliana Gomes; Segev, Sigal; Leopold, Joy

doi:10.1080/02650487.2020.1765656

Cited by 45 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 54 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Corporations' repeated misleading or deceptive environmental messages can increase audiences' skepticism about environmental communication, and this prevalent negative perception tends to hinder organization managers' environmental communication (Allen, 2016). Scholars investigated environmental messages in advertising and cautioned that environmental messages that are not substantive or specific can cause audiences to perceive the messages as greenwashing since the 1990s (Carlson et al, 1993;Davis, 1993;Bortree et al, 2012;Schmuck et al, 2018;Fernandes et al, 2020). The studies on green messages have been developed and conducted in the traditional media environment, but few studies have focused on the social media environment.…”

Section: Organizational Environmental Tweets 211mentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding environmental tweets of for-profits and nonprofits and their effects on user responses

Shin

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeOrganizations are communicating with the public about their thoughts and behaviors relevant to the environment via social networking sites. The purpose of this paper is to explore for-profit and nonprofit organizations' Twitter messages to understand their environment-related messages and their influences on the publics' responses.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducted a content analysis adopting four message classification systems: environmental message orientation, message specificity, message framing, and environmental issue. Guided by attribution theory, this study also explored how the organization's environmental messages influence social media (Twitter) user responses, likes, retweets, and replies.FindingsThe analysis showed that for-profits' messages tend to discuss their green products and manufacturing processes with specific numeric evidence, while nonprofits are disposed to describe a severely degraded environment. In addition, the study revealed that tweets yield a high number of likes and replies when the organizations are for-profits and the messages emphasize green products.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this study showed that the green message categorization systems are applicable to the social media context. But, this study focused on Twitter only. Future studies need to examine various social media platforms.Practical implicationsThe study findings recommend communication practitioners use substantive green messages highlighting actual pro-environmental performances. Also, practitioners might need to make a linkage between the discussed environmental issue and the organization (e.g. a water issue by a wildlife-related nonprofit, an energy issue by a home appliance manufacturer, an air pollution issue by a bicycle company). In addition, regarding the message specificity, infographics can be present specific information that audiences can readily understand because it is described visually.Originality/valueScholars investigated environmental messages in advertising and cautioned that environmental messages that are not substantive or specific can cause audiences to perceive the messages as greenwashing. However, these previous studies focused on conventional media, and they have not been replicated in the age of social media. Thus, it is important to explore the current status of organizational environmental messages on social media.

show abstract

Section: Organizational Environmental Tweets 211mentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding environmental tweets of for-profits and nonprofits and their effects on user responses

Shin

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…When faced with green advertising, consumers have difficulty distinguishing between acceptable and deceptive claims. This delegitimizes sincere green advertising made by sustainable companies and hinders efforts of the consumer to make an informed purchase decision and select the best green consumption alternative (Fernandes et al 2020). This impediment has further negative consequences, like being sceptical or distrusting of, or not believing in green advertising (Cho et al 2018;do Paco & Reis 2012;Obermiller & Spangenberg 1998).…”

Section: Positive Reinforcement: Transparency Corporation-centred Sol...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2022

IJIRM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fast fashion has become an indispensable choice of the consumers, who are convinced by dominant undertakings to continuously purchase goods. To succeed, the vast majority of the businesses create an artificial demand in along with their green claims, deceiving the purchasers who might seek complacence for their unceasing habit of buying more. One should, in this context, consider not only threats to consumer protection, but also to the adverse influence against the achievement of a truly circular economy, stemming from the take-make-waste approach. In accordance with the need of addressing such an issue, this paper aims to both analyse and provide feasible solutions for such a matter from a variety of aspects including law, economics, international business, global studies, and psychology.

show abstract

“…In this regard, Nguyen Viet and Nguyen Anh ( 2021 ) highlighted the importance of communicating honest and transparent messages through advertising by providing information about the positive impact of advertising on brand trust. When customers see ads, they gain a sense of trust and extend brand expectations (Fernandes et al 2020 ). Most scholars agree on the crucial role of green advertising in marketing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change and marketing: a bibliometric analysis of research from 1992 to 2022

Urhan

Hoştut

Güdekli

et al. 2023

Environ Sci Pollut Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change with adverse impacts on the environment, economy, and society requires marketing to change current attitudes and behaviors towards sustainable production and consumption, and thus climate change is interrelated to marketing. However, no body of literature has comprehensively investigated the connections and relationships between climate change and marketing. This study examined such connections and relationships from a bibliometric approach using Web of Science and Scopus databases from 1992 to 2022. The search strategy utilized topic and title/abstract/keyword search. The search query retrieved 1723 documents. VOSviewer and Biblioshiny were utilized to analyze data on authors, keywords, institutions, countries, sources, citations, and co-citations. The findings showed an upward trend in the annual number of publications with the top three most productive countries being the USA, the UK, and Australia and the most productive institutions in the USA, New Zealand, and the UK. The top three author keywords were climate change, sustainability, and marketing. The Sustainability journal ranked first in terms of productivity while Energy Policy in terms of citations. International collaborations were mostly between developed countries also known as Global North Countries, and collaborations between these countries and developing and developed countries should be encouraged. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of documents increased, and research themes altered. Research on energy, innovation, insect farming, and carbon management is a top priority. The results proved that most studies were conducted outside the field of marketing.

show abstract

When consumers learn to spot deception in advertising: testing a literacy intervention to combat greenwashing

Cited by 45 publications

References 54 publications

Understanding environmental tweets of for-profits and nonprofits and their effects on user responses

Understanding environmental tweets of for-profits and nonprofits and their effects on user responses

Untitled

Climate change and marketing: a bibliometric analysis of research from 1992 to 2022

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About