As the world continues the transition to a sustainable society, companies have begun to engage in greenwashing: a practice of making inaccurate or misleading claims about their sustainability practices or environmental impact of their products, seeking to profit from green purchase intention without any investment in sustainability.
Many consumers are now aware of greenwashing and its widespread nature. This has led to consumers adopting green skepticism: they do not trust sustainability claims made by companies.
Now, a research team at Hiroshima University has developed a conceptual framework to examine how green skepticism shapes consumers’ green purchase intention by integrating cognitive and emotional mechanisms.
In their study, published in Sustainability, the researchers developed three hypotheses after conducting a comprehensive review of existing scientific literature on green skepticism:
- Green skepticism negatively influences green purchase intention.
- Green product information seeking behavior mediates the relationship between green skepticism and green purchase intention. (Positively or negatively)
- Anticipated guilt mediates the relationship between green skepticism and green purchase intention. (Positively or negatively)
The 511 survey responses were subjected to statistical analysis to test the validity of the three hypotheses. The researchers concluded that the direct relationship between green skepticism and green purchase intention is negative but not statistically significant, contradicting previous studies that have reported a significant negative association.
Additionally, there is a significant negative relationship between green skepticism and green product information seeking, contrary to the dominant skepticism-as-verification view. Furthermore, green skepticism may encourage cognitive disengagement and information avoidance in the face of unresolved uncertainty. Green skepticism is also negatively associated with anticipated guilt, whereas anticipated guilt is positively associated with green purchase intention.
Data from Hiroshima University