Emotion and greenwashing

Abstract

Concern about climate change and the environment is on the rise and this has resulted in the public demanding businesses to engage in environmentally friendly practices. This has led to businesses engaging in greenwashing practices that exploit consumers’ intentions of taking part in more environmentally friendly actions. Emotions, an integral part of humans, have been shown to affect consumers’ decision making. Particularly, positive emotion increases the likelihood of using heuristic information processing and negative emotion increases the likelihood of systematic information processing. Since consumers’ decision making is part of the process that makes consumers susceptible to greenwashing, this paper aims to investigate the effect of emotions on consumers’ susceptibility to greenwashing. Greenwashing can occur in two forms, claim and executive greenwashing. Thus, this study also aims to investigate the effect of emotion on consumers’ susceptibility to both claim and executive greenwashing. The results of the studies conducted in this paper show that consumers experiencing positive emotions are more susceptible to greenwashing while consumers experiencing negative emotions are less susceptible. Furthermore, the results show that consumers experiencing positive emotions find products with both claim and executive greenwashing cues as more environmentally friendly compared to a product with only executive greenwashing cues. The findings of this paper add to current research about the factors that affect consumers’ susceptibility to greenwashing. These findings provide insights into the importance of greater government involvement in curbing greenwashing practices and a greater understanding of the role of retail stores in protecting consumers from greenwashing practices.