Perceived Greenwashing: The Interactive Effects of Green Advertising and Corporate Environmental Performance on Consumer Reactions

The current study investigates the effects of green advertising and a corporation's environmental performance on brand attitudes and purchase intentions. A 3 x 3 (firm's environmental performance and its advertising efforts as independent variables) experiment using n = 302 subjects was conducted. Results indicate that the negative effect of a firm's low performance on brand attitudes becomes stronger in the presence of green advertising compared to general corporate advertising and no advertising. Further, when the firm's environmental performance is high, both green and general corporate advertising result in more unfavorable brand attitudes than no advertising. The study's counter-intuitive findings are explained by attribution theory.