Profit Motives, Environmental Motives, and Perceived Corporate Greenwashing Revisited: A Replication and Extension of de Vries et al. (2015)

Abstract

As the climate change crisis has become more evident, a growing number of businesses and organizations have gotten involved in sustainability efforts. But not all corporate sustainability efforts are applauded: sometimes the public accuses companies of greenwashing, i.e., overstating the extent to which the company is environmentally friendly. There is little research on the factors that influence perceived greenwashing amongst the public. Here, we report a replication and extension of one of the few studies of this topic, Experiment 2 in de Vries et al. (2015, https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1327). The original study found that people perceived more greenwashing when an oil company communicated an environmental motive for a sustainability investment (carbon capture and storage), as opposed to a profit motive, d = 0.98 [0.37, 1.59]. The present pre-registered replication (n = 516) did not find support for this effect, with very little difference in perceived greenwashing depending on communicated motive, d = -0.09 [-0.38, 0.21]. As extensions, we included a condition where a mixed motive (both environment and profits) was communicated, tested the effect using a different type of company than the original, included a measure of general attitudes to the company in addition to perceived greenwashing, and included measures of individual differences in attitudes towards corporate social responsibility and belief in climate change. The most noteworthy exploratory finding was that attitudes were more positive when an environmental or a mixed motive was communicated rather than a profit motive.