International Journal of Advertising

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Can evoking nature in advertising mislead

consumers? The power of ‘executional
greenwashing'

Béatrice Parguel, Florence Benoit-Moreau & Cristel Antonia Russell

To cite this article: Béatrice Parguel, Florence Benoit-Moreau & Cristel Antonia Russell (2015)
Can evoking nature in advertising mislead consumers? The power of ‘executional greenwashing',
International Journal of Advertising, 34:1, 107-134, DOI: 10.1080/02650487.2014.996116

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International Journal of Advertising, 2015
Vol. 34, No. 1, 107 134, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2014.996116

Can evoking nature in advertising mislead consumers?

The power of ‘executional greenwashing’
B
eatrice Parguela*, Florence Benoit-Moreaua and Cristel Antonia Russellb
a
DRM, UMR CNRS 7088, Universit
e Paris-Dauphine, Place du Mar
echal de Lattre de Tassigny,
75775 Paris Cedex 16, France; bKogod School of Business, American University, 4400
Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20016, USA

(Received 24 October 2013; accepted 26 November 2014)

This paper examines the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect, defined as the use of
nature-evoking elements in advertisements to artificially enhance a brand’s ecological
image. Using classic models of information processing and persuasion, the research
tests whether ‘executional greenwashing’ differs as a function of consumer knowledge
about environmental issues in the product category and whether environmental
performance information can counterbalance the effect by helping consumers form an
accurate evaluation of the brand’s ecological image. Three experiments with French
consumers reveal that evoking nature does mislead consumers in their evaluation of a
brand’s ecological image, especially if they have low knowledge of environmental
issues. Two indicators of environmental performance, based on current international
policies, are tested to counteract ‘executional greenwashing’. Whereas a raw figure is
not sufficient to help non-expert consumers revise their judgment, accompanying the
figure with a traffic-light label eliminates ‘executional greenwashing’ amongst both
experts and non-experts. Theoretical and regulatory implications are discussed.
Keywords: greenwashing; advertising execution; environmental labelling; environ-
mental policy

At the end of the 1980s, many managerial articles in the business press such as Business,
Business Week, Business Horizons, Fortune or Advertising Age suggested that consumers
would be ready to change their patterns of consumption and switch products and services
towards more ecological alternatives (Carlson, Grove and Kangun 1993; Easterling,
Kenworthy and Nemzoff 1996; Kangun, Carlson and Grove 1991). In response to this
growing consumer ecological consciousness, advertisers and agencies began to use green
communication more regularly to promote their products (Easterling, Kenworthy and
Nemzoff 1996; Schuhwerk and Lefkoff-Hagius 1995; Shrum, McCarty, and Lowrey
1995). As Zinkhan and Carlson (1995, 5) stated, ‘Consumers want to be green. Ergo,
advertisers want to be green as well’. Twenty years later, spending in green advertising,
or the act of promoting the ‘greenness’ of companies, products or services, has increased
almost tenfold (Terrachoice 2009) and the environment continues to be a hot topic. Polls
show a growing global consumer demand for green products and practitioners plan to
increase their spending on green communication (Sheehan and Atkinson 2012).
In parallel, a side effect has emerged in the form of ‘greenwashing’ (Delmas and
Burbano 2011). Introduced in 1986,1 this neologism designates ‘the act of misleading
consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Ó 2015 Advertising Association

108 B. Parguel et al.

benefits of a product or service’ (Terrachoice 2010). Early in 1991, Kangun, Carlson and
Grove distinguished three categories of greenwashed advertising: (1) those employing
false claims; (2) those omitting important information that could help to evaluate environ-
mental claim sincerity; and (3) those employing vague or ambiguous term, which could
be summed up as lying, lying by omission or lying through lack of clarity. Carlson, Grove
and Kangun (1993) also focus their definition of greenwashed advertising on environmen-
tal claims, coining the term to describe the use of trivial, misleading or deceptive environ-
mental claims. In line with this definition, research to date has focused on ‘claim
greenwashing’, the use of textual arguments in the ad that create a misleading environ-
mental claim (e.g. Laufer 2003; Lyon and Maxwell 2011; Manrai et al. 1997; Newell,
Goldsmith, and Banzhaf 1998). It has ignored the potential ‘executional greenwashing’
effect, whereby nature-evoking elements in the ad execution may induce false perceptions
of a brand’s greenness, whether intentionally or not on the part of the advertiser. This
research addresses this gap by documenting the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect and
identifying moderating factors that may reduce its impact on consumers.
Advertising execution refers to ‘how advertising messages are presented’ (Stanton
and Burke 1998) and includes elements such as colour (Gorn et al. 1991), visual type
(Grossman and Till 1998) or picture quality (Miniard, Sirdeshmukh, and Innis 1992). In
the specific case of environmental communication, executional elements can be chosen to
communicate the ecological character of the product or brand through backgrounds repre-
senting natural landscapes (e.g. mountains, forests) or pictures symbolizing endangered
animals (e.g. pandas, dolphins) or renewable sources of energy (e.g. wind, waterfalls).
Executional elements may trigger ecological inferences subtly by activating implicit
references to nature through what Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ib
a~nez (2009) termed ‘nature
imagery’ using colours (e.g. green, blue) or sounds (e.g. sea, birds). The research pre-
sented here aims at offering empirical evidence of the potential misleading role of these
executional elements evoking nature, which we refer to as the ‘executional greenwashing’
effect.
As advertising practices improve, and debates about the need to regulate greenwash-
ing rose, ‘claim greenwashing’ has tended to diminish (Terrachoice 2010). In contrast,
the use of executional elements such as nature imagery, which stems at the core of
advertisers’ creativity, has not concretely been addressed until now (e.g. Gillespie 2008;
Horiuchi and Schuchard 2009). Non-governmental organizations and ecological activists
have made the issue of greenwashing a matter of strategic importance and launched
movements to denounce it. For instance, CorpWatch, Friends of the Earth International
and Groundwork organized the Greenwash Academy Awards during the 2002 Johannes-
burg World summit on Sustainable Development to ‘honour’ companies for their green-
washed marketing campaigns. Institutional stakeholders such as the European
Community (EC) or the United States’ Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are also increas-
ingly involved in matters of regulation. Some have argued that greenwashing not only
misleads consumers per se, but may also contribute to slowing the worldwide movement
towards sustainable consumption by (a) discouraging sincere companies’ efforts to go
green when others do just window-dressing communication (Cherry and Sneirson 2011)
and (b) guiding truly conscious consumers towards non-optimal choice (Chen and Chang
2013; Gillespie 2008; Polonsky, Grau, and Garma 2010).
In the public policy arena, Delmas and Burbano (2011) recognize that regulation of
greenwashing is generally lax but with strong variation across countries, from extremely
limited in the US to stricter rules in European countries (e.g. Norway, Netherlands,
France) and Australia. In the US, the FTC is empowered to apply Section 5 of the FTC
 International Journal of Advertising 109

Act to environmental marketing claims, by prohibiting deceptive acts or practices but

enforcement has so far been limited (Delmas and Burbano, 2011). The approach is far
stricter in Norway, where no car can be ‘green’, ‘clean’ or ‘environmentally friendly’
since 2007, all such descriptors being forbidden. Within the wider EC, all manufacturers
are required to display their vehicles’ average carbon emissions into the atmosphere on
all promotional materials. The Netherlands further extends this requirement by also
requiring on print materials a clear color-coded traffic-light label to maximize consumer
understanding of the information. A recent report (Brannigan et al. 2011) recommends
extending such regulation to all EU members and all media (not only print). Greenwash-
ing regulation focused specifically on executional elements is scarce, because knowledge
about their misleading effect is, to date, inexistent. Only the Australian Consumer
Commission (2011) and the French advertising professional authority (ADEME-ARPP
2012) have included in their recommendations not to use pictures or symbols that could
suggest environmental benefits. The French code of environment goes beyond this mere
recommendation by specifically prohibiting advertising visuals showing cars in a natural
setting and not on roads or ways dedicated to the normal usage of motor vehicles, with the
main objective to not encourage irresponsible driving behaviours. Despite these efforts and
the growing debates, especially in Europe, little is known about what may be called
‘executional greenwashing’, its misleading effect and the role of public policies to deter it.
This paper addresses this open issue by first assessing whether executional elements
evoking nature in advertisements artificially enhance consumers’ perception of brands as
green. A second objective of the research is to offer options for regulating this potential
misleading effect by identifying whether the display of environmental performance infor-
mation can reduce or even remove the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect.
To answer these two interlinked research questions, we draw on the Elaboration Like-
lihood Model (see Petty and Cacioppo 1981) to build a conceptual framework that
extends previous research on nature-evoking advertisements (Hartmann and Apaolaza-
Ib
a~
nez 2009) and then test the propositions in three experiments. Study 1 provides empiri-
cal evidence of the greenwashing effect through executional elements evoking nature on a
brand’s ecological image, even among consumers who hold significant knowledge about
environmental issues in the product category. Study 2 demonstrates that providing envi-
ronmental performance indicators (EPI) about the product is not enough to counterbal-
ance the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect. Study 3 reveals that the use of traffic-light
type of labels to display environmental performance information is able to remove the
‘executional greenwashing’ effect. The research offers an ecologically valid test of these
EPI options by drawing from policies currently being discussed within the European
Community. Hence, the paper presents implications for advertising practice as well as
regulatory recommendations for policy makers.

Literature review
Green advertising
Despite its growth, there is a shortage of studies on green communication (Finisterra do
Paço and Reis 2012). At a broad strategic level, the research addressed the ways in which
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) engagements are communicated within annual
reports, finding that communicating about ecological engagements improves companies’
brand image or brand equity, contributes to differentiating products and retaining custom-
ers (Hoeffler and Keller 2002; Keller 2003; Mohr and Webb 2005; Van de Ven 2008) and,
110 B. Parguel et al.

at a corporate level, boosts trust in the firm, as well as companies’ reputation or legiti-
macy to operate (Schlegelmilch and Pollach 2005; Swaen and Chumpitaz 2008; Van de
Ven 2008; Vanhamme and Grobben 2009; Wæraas and Ihlen 2009).
As an indication of the importance of the applied and practical aspects of green com-
munication, the Journal of Advertising devoted two special issues to green advertising in
1995 and, more recently, in 2012. The 1995 special issue lays the groundwork for further
studies, offering large conceptual and philosophical frameworks for research on the topic
(Banerjee, Gulas and Gulas 1995) and a theoretical essay about the compatibility between
advertising and ecology (Kilbourne 1995). This special issue also clarifies the definition
of ‘green advertising’ as a promotional message that features a green attribute for a prod-
uct or service (Schuhwerk and Lefkoff-Hagius 1995) or that may appeal to the needs and
desires of environmentally concerned consumers (Zinkhan and Carlson 1995).
Interestingly, though Zinkhan and Carlson (1995) consider promotional messages that
do not feature any environmental attribute but enhance an environmental appeal in the
way it is carried out or presented, most of the articles published in the literature rely on
Schuhwerk and Lefkoff-Hagius’ (1995) definition of green advertising, focusing solely
on the greenness of claim (Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ib
a~nez 2009). Researchers have, for
instance, experimentally tested the characteristics of a green claim, such as its positive or
negative formulation (Obermiller 1995), its framing in terms of promotion vs. prevention
(Bickart and Ruth 2012; Kareklas, Carlson, and Muehling 2012), its relationship with the
product (being product or non-product related, Ku et al. 2012), its strength (Chang 2011;
Manrai et al. 1997; Tucker et al. 2012), numerical preciseness (Xie and Kronrod 2012) or
assertiveness (Kronrod, Grinstein, and Wathieu 2012).
Much of the extant research has addressed how consumer characteristics affect green
advertising efficacy, namely scepticism (Finisterra do Paço and Reis 2012; Obermiller
1995; Schuhwerk and Lefkoff-Hagius 1995; Shrum, McCarty, and Lowrey 1995), ambiv-
alence toward green advertising (Chang 2011), topic knowledge (Finisterra do Paço and
Reis 2012; Newell, Goldsmith, and Banzhaf 1998), environmental consciousness (Bickart
and Ruth 2012; Finisterra do Paço and Reis 2012; Newell, Goldsmith, and Banzhaf 1998;
Obermiller 1995; Schuhwerk and Lefkoff-Hagius 1995) or the perceived importance of
the environmental issues at stake (Kronrod, Grinstein, and Wathieu 2012). Although
more limited, previous research has also integrated consumers’ familiarity with the adver-
tised brands (Bickart and Ruth 2012).
Notwithstanding the primary focus on green claims, a few studies have explored the
influence of the greenness of advertising execution. The idea of greenness is usually con-
veyed through the use of a natural setting or nature imagery so as to create an implicit
visual association with nature and thus serve as an associative claim (Banerjee, Gulas and
Gulas 1995; Fowler and Close 2012; Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ib
a~nez 2009). Unlike sub-
stantive product- or process-related claims, image-related claims infer that the advertised
brand is positively related to the environment (Carlson et al. 1993; 1996). Indeed, in their
studies on the effects of nature imagery, Hartmann and colleagues (2009; 2013) found
that images that evoke nature are as emotionally arousing as the experience of real nature
and this affective response triggers more positive attitudes toward the advertised brand.
Their findings support that greenwashing can also occur via an underlying emotional pro-
cess driven by affectively laden green imagery in the advertisement. The research pre-
sented here extends this emerging line of work by offering further evidence of the impact
of advertising executional elements on perceptions of a brand’s greenness, as well as of
the potential for other advertising executional elements to alter the impact of green
imagery.
 International Journal of Advertising 111

The ‘executional greenwashing’ effect and its regulation

As a side effect of the rise in green advertising, the development of greenwashing trig-
gered a short debate early in the 1990s about which and how public policies could regu-
late the phenomenon (Carlson, Grove and Kangun 1993; Greenberg 1991; Kangun,
Carlson and Grove 1991; Newell, Goldsmith, and Banzhaf 1998; Scammon and Mayer
1993, 1995). Newell and colleagues (1998) call for ‘the need for increased monitoring of
environmental advertising by government agencies and consumer groups’. However,
again, this debate solely addresses ‘claim greenwashing’. As an illustration, Carlson and
colleagues (1993) suggest that green advertisements that promote the greenness of a full
organization are the most common and also the most greenwashed because they rely on
generic and ambiguous claims.
Greenwashing came to the forefront of research in the late 2000s following a new
surge in green advertising that had almost tripled between 2006 and 2009 (Terrachoice
2009), an increase in calls denunciating the practice (Laufer 2003; Horiuchi and Schu-
chard 2009; Delmas and Burbano 2011; Lyon and Maxwell 2011), and official debates
about regulation (e.g. in 2010, the US FTC created a task force to develop new guidelines;
in 2011, the Australian parliament adopted the Consumer Law). However, although sev-
eral recent academic articles have focused on greenwashing (e.g. Bradford 2007; Chen
and Chang 2013; Delmas and Burbano 2011; Pomering and Johnson 2009), there has
been little research on, or regulation on, ‘executional greenwashing’, whereby execu-
tional elements such as image, sounds, symbols evoking nature may mislead consumers
as much as ‘claim greenwashing’ has.
Several countries have trialled self-regulation, focusing on how to present environ-
mental claims through procedural instruments such as voluntary agreements and infra-
structure provision. For instance, the updated 2012 version of FTC Green guides state
that environmental claims should avoid vague, unsubstantiated, misleading, confusing,
false or deceptive claims; they should be accurate, precise (i.e. mentioning under what
conditions the performance may be obtained, which part of the product is concerned,
which part of the product life cycle is impacted by the improvement), backed by scientific
evidence, and clear enough for non-expert people. However, rarely do recommendations
deal with advertising executional elements. One exception is France’s ‘Autorit
e de
R
egulation Professionelle de la Publicit
e’ which, as mentioned earlier, has evoked the
potential misleading effect of visuals and pictures and recommends not using them
(ADEME-ARPP 2012).
Government regulation sets external direct pressures on advertisers to avoid that an
uncertain regulatory environment leaves room for opportunistic usage of greenwashing
(Delmas and Burbano 2011). Its instruments include mandatory standards, prohibitions or
bans (Wolff and Sch€ onherr 2011). For instance, Norway prohibits the promotion of cars
with green claims. In the same vein, the 2011 Australian Consumer Law requires using
with qualification ‘images or symbols that are widely accepted as having a particular
meaning that could mislead consumers’ and carries penalties up to AUD1.1 million for
businesses that fail to meet its requirements (ACCC 2013).
However ‘executional greenwashing’ is more difficult to address through self-regula-
tion or government regulation than the regulation of lies or misleading claims. Indeed,
the list of visuals or pictorial elements that can mislead consumers is endless, depending
on each consumer’s cultural background, making it impossible to provide a universal and
precise recommendation. As such, it is crucial to identify alternate ways to communicate
environmental information and educate the market about greenwashing (Delmas and
112 B. Parguel et al.

Burbano 2011). Indeed communicative instruments that allow the accurate calibration of
‘consumer knowledge’ (Alba and Hutchinson 1991; Press and Arnould 2009) are the pre-
ferred option proposed by the 1994 Oslo Symposium on Sustainable Consumption and
reaffirmed by the 2002 UN World summit: the recommendation is ‘to develop [. . .] effec-
tive, transparent, verifiable, non-misleading and discriminatory consumer information
tools’ (UNEP 2002).
Despite rising environmental concerns worldwide, there is scarce research regarding
the tools that managers or policymakers could use to mitigate greenwashing (Delmas and
Burbano 2011). Principles of regulation are mainly based on intuition or professional
expertise. Scientific evidence is needed to assess whether these advertising practices do
mislead consumers, and to evaluate whether regulatory recommendations could counter-
balance these effects. This research program addresses these needs by first presenting
empirical evidence of the misleading effect of nature-evoking executional cues on con-
sumers’ brand perceptions (Study 1) and then testing the efficiency of environmental per-
formance indicators (EPI) (Study 2) and traffic-light labels (Study 3), both easily
implementable communicative instruments, to counterbalance this misleading effects.
Studies 2 and 3 are highly relevant from a practical point of view, as both instruments
reflect the requirements of the European Directive 1999/94/EC and its 2007 proposed
amendment (Davies 2007).

Study 1 does evoking nature in advertising mislead consumers?

Conceptual framework
The classic Elaboration Likelihood Framework (ELM) formulated by Petty and Cacioppo
(1981) is particularly suitable to understanding how elements of advertising execution
may influence consumers, in particular in the context of green advertising (Bickart and
Ruth 2012; Tucker et al. 2012; Xie and Kronrod 2012). This classic model identifies two
routes to persuasion, depending on consumers’ motivation and ability to process the infor-
mation in a message. A motivated and competent consumer follows a central route and
develops attitudes based on ‘an active thinking about either the issue or object-relevant
information provided by the message’ (Petty and Cacioppo 1981, 256). A less competent
and motivated consumer follows a peripheral route and the attitude is the result of simple
inferences, heuristics and categorization based on ad executional elements such as col-
ours, pictures, source attractiveness or music (Batra and Stayman 1990; Grunert 1996;
Han 1992; MacInnis and Jaworski 1989).
Research on green advertising has largely drawn from the ELM to assess the impact of
green cues on consumers’ brand attitudes. For instance, Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ib
a~nez
(2009) provide evidence of the peripheral route, a mostly affect-based process, by show-
ing, in their case, that peripheral visual cues such as nature imagery led to more positive
brand attitudes. However there may be consumers or types of relevant information in the
advertisement that moderate the effects on brand attitudes. As summed up by Petty and
Cacioppo (1981, 128), ‘although people want to hold correct attitudes, the amount and
nature of issue-relevant elaboration in which they are willing or able to engage to evaluate
a message vary with individual and situational factors.’ Hence a sole focus on the content
of the advertising message may not be sufficient to understand consumers’ responses to it.
One important individual difference moderator, in the tradition of the ELM, is con-
sumer topic knowledge, i.e. knowledge related to the topic of the message, which influen-
ces the ability to process the message and the outcome of persuasive attempts (e.g. Alba
 International Journal of Advertising 113

and Hutchinson 1991; Friestad and Wright 1994; Kachersky and Kim 2011). When
assessing the ecological benefits of a specific product, consumers’ knowledge of the topic
of environmental issues (also known as topic knowledge) in the product category is thus
likely to affect how they process and respond to messages about brands in the category.
Previous studies have already noted the role of such technical or scientific knowledge, by
revealing consumers’ difficulties to understand the information underlying the environ-
mental claims (e.g. Finisterra do Paço and Reis 2012; Morris, Hastak, and Mazis 1995;
Newell, Goldsmith, and Banzhaf 1998; Polonsky, Garma, and Landreth-Grau 2011; Xie
and Kronrod 2012). In particular, less knowledgeable consumers are more sensitive to
signalling bias based on information precision (Xie and Kronrod 2012). In contrast,
knowledgeable consumers’ ‘superior elaborative ability’ should allow them to correctly
process and interpret product-related assertions without relying on peripheral cues (Alba
and Hutchinson 1991, 5).
In the context of ‘executional greenwashing’, the persuasive power of advertising exe-
cutional elements representing nature may therefore differ depending on consumers’ topic
knowledge of environmental issues in the product category. Consumers with such topic
knowledge, referred to as ‘expert’ consumers, are less likely to rely on and be influenced
by the use of advertising executional elements representing nature, whereas ‘non-expert’
consumers, consumers without such topic knowledge, may be influenced through the
peripheral route to persuasion, resulting in greater perception of the brand’s ecological
image. Stated formally:

H1a. For non-expert consumers, advertising executional elements evoking nature

have a positive influence on the brand’s ecological image.
H1b. For expert consumers, advertising executional elements evoking nature do not
influence the brand’s ecological image.

A large stream of research has documented that attitudes are a function of beliefs. For
instance, in the domain of advertising, research has demonstrated that the influence of
advertisements on attitude toward the brand is mediated through brand perceptions (e.g.
Chaiken 1980; Lutz 1985; Lutz and Swasy 1977; McKenzie, Lutz, and Belch 1986;
Olson, Toy, and Dover 1982). Within the ELM framework, brand attitude is a function of
beliefs: systematic beliefs based on an extensive processing of relevant information proc-
essed via the central route vs. more inferential and heuristic beliefs based on the signal-
ling effects of the advertising executional elements.
Building on this mediation model, we predict that advertising executional elements
evoking nature will influence overall brand attitude by altering the brand’s ecological
image. Considering the previous discussion about the influence of consumers’ topic knowl-
edge (Hypothesis 1), experts and non-experts should not be equally influenced. Therefore,

H2a. For non-expert consumers, the brand’s ecological image mediates the influence
of advertising executional elements evoking nature on the brand attitude.
H2b. For expert consumers, the brand’s ecological image does not mediate the influ-
ence of advertising executional elements evoking nature on the brand attitude.

Method
Procedures
The data collection relied on a web survey. Across all conditions, participants were
invited to review a commercial website’s home page, which presented a new vehicle (L3)
114 B. Parguel et al.

constructed by the brand LUNA, a fictitious car manufacturer. This sector was chosen as
one of the most concerned with greenwashing practices (Gillespie 2008). We selected a
fictitious brand, in line with previous studies (e.g. Bickart and Ruth 2012; Brown and
Dacin 1997; Ku et al. 2012), to invite the respondents to make judgements on the basis of
the message content and execution themselves and avoid any effects of prior brand famil-
iarity (Anderson and Jolson 1980). Participants were told that: ‘In the context of the
launch of its new vehicle, an international carmaker invites you to complete a ques-
tionnaire’. The instructions explicitly stated that the carmaker’s name could not be
revealed for the sake of market research and had been replaced by the name Luna L3.
The introduction then specified that the study included two phases: in the first phase, the
participant would see the carmaker’s webpage presenting the new vehicle; the participant
could stay on this page as long as they wished, and, after 30 seconds, the option to ‘Go to
questionnaire’ became available; in the second phase, the participant completed a ques-
tionnaire giving their opinion on the new model. Testing the fictional brand’s commercial
website increased realism in the online survey.

Experimental design and stimuli

The experiment follows a 2 (advertising executional elements evoking nature: present vs.
absent) £ 2 (topic knowledge: experts vs. non-experts) design. The presence of execu-
tional elements evoking nature was manipulated through two modalities, graphics and
sound, to simulate the multimodal environment of webpages (Qualls et al. 1997). Specifi-
cally nature-evoking elements included a picture representing a forest, the green colour in
tinted areas and the auditory diffusion of a birdsong (see Appendix 1). As in previous
studies (Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ib
a~ nez 2009), the control condition displayed no picture
(white background) and no sound. This simple, clean design was necessary to prevent
any distracting associations that may have been induced by any other elements such as
streets, roads, and so on. Such a simple design is also externally valid, since it is actually
used in the car industry (e.g. Dacia website,2 or Skoda, for the Fabia webpage3). To rein-
force the nature manipulation, the auditory modality, with the birdsong, was also used in
the nature-evoking condition. The nature-evoking manipulation was pretested with a sam-
ple of 143 adult members of a commercial panel, as in the main studies (30.1% male,
mean age 38). Pretest participants were exposed to either the control or the nature-
evoking website and asked the extent to which they felt (1 not at all to 3 very much)
that the website evoked for them each of six topics: escape, nature, urban life, technology,
pollution, sportiveness. Supporting the manipulation, only nature ranked significantly dif-
ferent (2.50 vs. 1.97; t(141) D 4.55, p < 0.05). The execution of the manipulation was
also checked in the main study, by asking respondents whether the webpage included
background (yes / no) and sound (yes / no) and if yes, they selected from seven multiple-
choice options, including the correct one. Only responses from panel participants who
could identify the specific setting and sound were provided to the researchers and are thus
included in the analyses.

Measures
The respondents first assessed the brand’s ecological image on a three-item scale adapted
from Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ib
a~ nez (2009) and Chen (2010). The remainder of the ques-
tionnaire contained previously validated scales: attitude toward the brand (Batra et al.
2000), attitude toward the webpage (Ng and Chyi 2008), and environmental
 International Journal of Advertising 115

consciousness (Parguel, Benoit-Moreau, and Larceneux 2011). In our specific setting,

attitude toward the webpage is similar to attitude toward the ad, and was therefore
included as a control variable in the analyses, given that the extant research has shown its
role in influencing attitude toward the brand (see McKenzie, Lutz, and Belch 1986). Envi-
ronmental consciousness was also measured and controlled for as it is known to influence
consumers’ responses to green advertising (Chun-Tuan 2012). Finally, respondents’ topic
knowledge was assessed via their knowledge of the average carbon emission required for
all new passenger cars by 2015 by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association
agreement. Using an objective measure is preferable when the research objective relates
to consumers’ ability to encode new information (Selnes and Grønhaug 1986) because it
avoids several subjective biases, such as social desirability or differences in self-confi-
dence. Respondents who gave the correct answer from multiple choice options were con-
sidered topic knowledgeable and labelled ‘experts’. Those who indicated they did not
know were considered non-topic knowledgeable and labelled ‘non-experts’. Those who
gave an incorrect answer were not included in the analyses.
With the exception of topic knowledge, all the constructs were measured on seven-
point scales. We conducted unidimensionality and reliability checks for the multi-items
scales and found satisfactory reliability. Appendix 2 provides the factor loadings for all
scale items, resultant of factor analysis with Varimax rotation, and measurement reliabil-
ity information in each study. Appendix 3 provides the number of participants and the
means for the DV (i.e. the brand’s ecological image) in all conditions.

Sample
To ensure diversity in the sample, we recruited respondents from the panel of a profes-
sional market research institute. Composed of 110 persons (38% women, mean age D 38
years), the final sample represented various regions in France and was heterogeneous in
terms of socio-economic status. The proportion of experts in the sample, 40%, is compa-
rable to those in previous studies that found that 37% of Australian consumers and 40%
of the US consumers could be classified as having high knowledge about carbon offsets
(Polonsky, Garma, and Landreth-Grau 2011). We randomly assigned the subjects to one
of the two treatments. Additional analyses showed that the two groups were homogeneous
in terms of gender (x2(1) D 0.11, ns), age (F(1,108) D 1.56, ns), and environmental con-
sciousness (F(1,108) D 0.05, ns).

Results
Controlling for attitude toward the webpage (F(1,105) D 36.10, p < 0.001), the 2 £ 2
ANOVA reveals a main effect of the presence of executional elements evoking nature
(F(1,105) D 19.44, p < 0.001) qualified by a marginally significant interaction effect
between the presence of executional elements evoking nature and consumers’ topic
knowledge (F(1,105) D 3.04, p D 0.08). A series of planned contrasts were used to test
whether, as predicted by Hypothesis 1, the presence of advertising executional elements
evoking nature only generates higher perceptions of the brand’s ecological image among
non-expert consumers. In line with H1, these tests indicate that the effect of advertising
execution on the brand’s ecological image is significant for non-expert consumers
(F(1,63) D 21.80, p < 0.001), as predicted, and does not reach significance for expert
consumers (F(1,41) D 3.17, p D 0.08). This pattern of effects is plotted in Figure 1: the
brand’s ecological image rises from 4.17 to 5.44 for non-experts when they are exposed
116 B. Parguel et al.

Figure 1. Brand ecological image per condition in Study 1.

to nature-evoking executional elements, and there is a small increase amongst experts as

well (4.36 to 4.88). Study 1 proves the efficiency of ‘executional greenwashing’ for non-
expert people and, although the effect is only directional, reveals an upward trend in
brand ecological image amongst expert ones as well. Therefore, H1a and H2b are both
supported.
To test whether the brand’s ecological image mediates the link between exposure to
nature-evoking elements and consumers’ attitude toward the brand (H2), we used the pro-
cedure proposed by Zhao and colleagues (2010) and Hayes’ (2012) PROCESS macro
(with model 7 using consumers’ topic knowledge as a moderator and attitude toward the
webpage as a covariate). We also applied a bootstrapping procedure with 5000 boot-
strapped samples to counteract the assumption of normality for the sampling distribution
of the indirect effect (ab), as required by the Sobel test (Hayes 2009).
As indicated in Table 1, the bootstrap analysis shows a significant and positive indi-
rect effect of the presence of nature-evoking executional elements on brand attitude
among non-expert consumers (the 95% confidence interval does not include 0) and, in a
weaker way, among expert consumers (the 90% confidence interval does not include 0).
In other words, Study 1 provides empirical evidence of the ‘executional green-
washing’ effect: nature-evoking executional cues affect perceptions of a brand’s ecologi-
cal image and in turn lead to more positive brand attitudes. The effects vary as a function
of consumers’ topic knowledge, with a large ‘executional greenwashing’ effect for
non-expert consumers and a marginally significant effect on expert consumers.
Table 1. Mediation tests: bootstrap results for indirect effects (Study 1)

Indirect effect on Path from advertising Interaction Path from mediator to Mean indirect effect Bias-corrected 95% Bias-corrected 90%
brand attitude exposure to mediator effect brand attitude (ab paths) confidence interval confidence interval

Brand ecological image mediating the effect of the presence of advertising executional elements evoking nature
Among non-expert 1.16 (4.82) 0.66 ( 1.74) 0.44 (4.94) 0.52 [0.23; 0.95] [0.26; 0.86]
consumers
Among expert 0.23 [ 0.01; 0.57] [0.03; 0.51]
consumers

p < 0.10,  p < 0.05,  p<0.01 (bilateral tests).
International Journal of Advertising
117
118 B. Parguel et al.

Nature-evoking audiovisual elements on the webpage lead consumers to have greater per-
ceptions of the brand as ecological and these perceptions in turn affect their attitude
towards the advertised brand (considering a 90% confidence interval). The finding that
even expert consumers tend to be affected by nature-evoking elements may be due to the
fact that no other information was provided to evaluate the greenness of the product, leav-
ing little opportunity to engage in a deep elaboration through the central route process.
Hence, even expert consumers have little reason to question the message’s sincerity, and
can be marginally affected by peripheral elements, these elements being the only ones
present. Therefore the stricter hypothesis test with a confidence interval of 95% confers
full support for H2: as hypothesized, the brand’s ecological image serves as a mediator
for non-experts, in support of H2a, but not for experts, in support of H2b. We note that,
were the statistical tests relaxed to a 90% confidence interval, the mediation would also
be significant for experts.
The finding that ‘executional greenwashing’ has a misleading effect across consumers
raises more sharply the question of its regulation: how to counteract the ‘executional
greenwashing’ effect. Identifying a differential effect between expert and non-expert con-
sumers requires messages providing environmental performance information to correct
the effect of nature-evoking elements. Having provided evidence of the ‘executional
greenwashing’ effect, we turn to a test of two communication elements that may palliate
this effect in Study 2 and Study 3 by offering objective environmental information.

Study 2 can objective environmental performance information correct the

‘executional greenwashing’ effect?
Study 2 assesses whether the display of environmental performance information, which
was in fact selected by the European Community to encourage a progressive reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions due to passenger cars, can correct the ‘executional green-
washing’ effect documented in Study 1. The EC directive (called directive 1999/94/EC of
December, 13 1999) requires that car manufacturers selling within European countries
provide information regarding new cars’ carbon emission with the aim of directing con-
sumers’ choices towards greener cars. A potential additional benefit of environmental
performance information is that this kind of objective information may also prevent
greenwashing by helping consumers form an accurate perception of a brand’s ecological
image, regardless of the executional advertising setting. Indeed, a previous study found
that displaying independent sustainability ratings of companies’ environmental perfor-
mance is efficient to help consumers evaluate companies’ environmental claims (Parguel,
Benoit-Moreau, and Larceneux 2011). Poor ratings make consumers infer opportunistic
reasons why the company communicates, therefore degrading corporate brand evaluations
compared with a company communicating the same way, but enjoying positive ratings.
Extending this previous work, Study 2 examines whether the display of environmental per-
formance information might reduce the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect, especially when
the information indicates poor environmental performance.

Conceptual framework
As discussed earlier, a central premise of the ELM is that consumers’ response to infor-
mation differs depending on their level of knowledge about the issue at hand. Consumers
who hold significant knowledge about ecological issues should be more able to treat the
environmental information provided, therefore following a central route of persuasion
 International Journal of Advertising 119

(Alba and Hutchinson 1991). Their brand evaluation should be formed based on the
objective environmental performance provided, which is a strong argument, and not
from the visual and sound executional elements manipulated in the ad. Conversely, con-
sumers with no knowledge of the topic, i.e. non-experts, are more likely to follow a
peripheral route: less motivated and able to treat the objective information provided, they
will base their brand evaluation on the executional elements and not on the objective
environmental performance information. Hence, executional elements that evoke nature
should, as in Study 1, lead to higher brand ecological image amongst consumers with no
topic knowledge regardless of the presence of environmental performance indicators. In
contrast, consumers with topic knowledge, i.e. expert consumers, should be affected by
the value of the environmental performance indicator (EPI) in their evaluation of the
brand’s ecological image. This reasoning leads to H3.

H3a. For non-expert consumers, advertising executional elements evoking nature

enhance the brand’s ecological image, whereas the level of the EPI does not
influence it.
H3b. For expert consumers, the level of the EPI damages the brand’s ecological image,
whereas advertising executional elements evoking nature do not influence it.

Method
Procedures and measures
The procedure was the same as in Study 1: a web survey regarding the fictitious launch of
a new vehicle, L3 by the carmaker Luna. Consumers were asked to evaluate the L3 com-
mercial Webpage using the same measures as in Study 1.

Experimental design and stimuli

To test H3, the experiment relies on a 2 (advertising executional elements evoking nature:
present vs. absent) £ 2 (EPI: average vs. poor) £ 2 (topic knowledge: experts vs. non-
experts) design, in which we manipulated the two first factors. The advertising execu-
tional elements were manipulated as in Study 1 and objective topic knowledge was mea-
sured with the same procedure as well. The EPI was operationalized as the indication of
the vehicle carbon emission raw figure, as required by the European Directive 1999/94/
EC. To test the inability of non-expert consumers to treat environmental performance
information and the sensitivity of expert consumers to the value of the EPI, we needed
two values of the EPI. Average CO2 emissions from passenger cars was between 140 and
150 g/km in France in 2010; therefore, a rate of 149 g/km was used as a baseline, and a
rate of 209 g/km, a very high carbon emission rate, was used to indicate poor environmen-
tal performance (see Appendix 1).
In addition to previous manipulation checks that were used in Study 1, respondents
answered whether the CO2 emission rate of the Luna L3 was depicted on the website
(yes / no / do not know), and if so, selected from multiple choice options what range they
recalled this emission rate to be (e.g. less than 120 g/km, between 121 and 180 g/km,
more than 181 g/km) or ‘do not know’. Those participants who could not remember any
emission rate (N D 58) or the correct emission rate (N D 124) were excluded from the
analyses.
120 B. Parguel et al.

Sample
The same recruitment method was employed as in Study 1. 189 participants (52%
women, mean age D 37 years) were considered in the analyses. Experts comprise 35% of
the sample. The sample represented various regions in France and was heterogeneous in
terms of socio-economic status. We randomly assigned the subjects to the four treatments.
The four groups were homogeneous in terms of gender (x2(3) D 1.38, ns), age (F(3,185) D
0.87, ns), and environmental consciousness (F(3,185) D 1.04, ns).

Results
Controlling for attitude toward the webpage (F(1,180) D 30.04, p < 0.001), the analysis
of variance reveals main effects for all three factors: advertising executional elements
evoking nature (F(1,180) D 6.49, p < 0.05), consumers’ topic knowledge (F(1,180) D
23.50, p < 0.001) and the EPI (F(1,180) D 25.85, p < 0.001). An interaction also emerges
between the EPI and consumers’ topic knowledge (F(1,180) D 7.01, p < 0.01). The other
2-way interactions are not significant (all F(1,180) < 0.26, p > 0.61) nor is the 3-way
interaction (F(1,180) D 2.26, p D 0.134). See Appendix 3 for the sample sizes and mean
brand ecological images for each condition.
The hypotheses were tested with a series of planned contrasts. For non-expert con-
sumers, the presence of advertising executional elements evoking nature (M(Absent) D
5.06, M(Present) D 5.54, F(1,114) D 4.72, p < 0.05) and the level of the EPI (M(149) D
5.55, M(209) D 5.05, F(1,114) D 5.13, p < 0.05) influence the brand’s ecological image.
For expert consumers, the level of the EPI (M(149) D 5.06, M(209) D 3.38, F(1,65) D
19.82, p < 0.001) influences the brand’s ecological image, whereas the presence of exe-
cutional elements evoking nature does not (M(Absent) D 3.98, M(Present) D 4.46, F(1,65) D
1.66, ns). These patterns of effects are plotted in Figure 2.
The analyses thus reveal an overall main effect of the level of the EPI such that a
lower EPI leads to greater perceptions of the brand’s ecological image amongst both non-
expert and expert consumers, although the effect is of larger magnitude for expert con-
sumers. Overall H3a is partially supported as non-experts are influenced by executional
elements but also by the level of EPI; H3b is fully supported with experts influenced by
the level of EPI but not by executional elements.
The results provide evidence of boundary conditions for the efficiency of raw environ-
mental performance information, and therefore of the EC directive. The display of an EPI
is not sufficient to counterbalance the effects of ‘executional greenwashing’. Facing a
very poor rate of carbon emissions, non-expert consumers’ ecological perceptions of the
brand still reach a level of 5 out of 7. The display of an EPI reduces expert consumers’
ecological perceptions of the brand but the overall main effect of ‘executional green-
washing’ remained. Study 3 investigates the potential for another form of environmental
performance information display to alter this greenwashing effect.

Study 3 - can a traffic-light rendition of environmental performance information

correct the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect?
Study 3 proposes to test the efficiency of a specific format to display environmental per-
formance information: the traffic-light type of label, inspired by the energy appliance
label program compulsory in Europe. A similar case appears in research on nutrition
labels, which also display numerical information from which consumers must infer
 International Journal of Advertising 121

Figure 2. Brand ecological image per condition in Study 2.

122 B. Parguel et al.

nutritional qualities. The label format is crucial, especially if it can reduce the perceived
costs of searching and processing this information (Moorman 1996). Central to the proc-
essing of numerical nutrition information is the need for a comparison baseline, because
raw figures offer no real meaning on their own and instead must be confronted against ref-
erence values (Viswanathan and Hastak 2002). Viswanathan and colleagues (2009) show
that, for consumers with low literacy levels, graphic nutrition labels (e.g. showing value
ranges or ratings) are more effective than those displaying raw figures or percentages in
terms of aiding consumers’ judgment. In the context of the EPI display, a traffic-light
representation of the raw information about emission rates showing value ranges associ-
ated to colour codes should help expert and non-expert consumers calibrate environmen-
tal performance information, therefore counterbalancing the ‘executional greenwashing’
effect. Therefore, we hypothesize:

H4. For experts and non-experts, the presence of a traffic-light label removes the
effect of advertising executional elements evoking nature on the brand’s eco-
logical image.

Method
Procedures and measures
The procedure was the same as in Study 1 using a web survey, considering the fictitious
launch of a new vehicle, L3, by the carmaker Luna. Consumers were exposed to the L3
Webpage. The same measures were used.

Experimental design and stimuli

The experiment consists of a 2 (advertising executional elements evoking nature: present
vs. absent) £ 2 (topic knowledge: experts vs. non-experts) design, in which the first factor
was manipulated and the second factor measured as in Study 1. All conditions included a
traffic-light label graphically representing the carbon emission value of 149 g/km
(see Appendix 1). We purposefully selected an average performance, on the premise that
if the label were efficient at this level of performance, it would be all the more efficient
for highly above the norm values. The graphic traffic-light is based on the 2007 Davies
motion for a European parliament resolution to amend Directive 1999/94/EC and intro-
duce legal requirements for the labelling, advertising and marketing of new cars within
the EU internal market. Specifically, the motion proposed that a minimum of 20% of the
space devoted to the promotion of new cars should provide environmental performance
information in a conspicuous, user-friendly and possibly colour-coded format for the
purposes of comparison. Those participants who could not remember any emission rate
(N D 52) or the correct emission rate (N D 70) were excluded from the analyses.

Sample
The analyses are based on 125 participants (62% women, mean age D 36 years) recruited
from the panel of a professional market research institute, as in the two previous studies.
Experts represented 41% of the sample (39% in the control condition, 42% in the nature-
evoking condition). The sample represented various regions in France and was heteroge-
neous in terms of socio-economic status. We randomly assigned the subjects to the two
 International Journal of Advertising 123

treatments. Additional analyses showed that the two groups were homogeneous in terms
of gender (x2(1) D 0.02, ns), age (F(1,123) D 0.02, ns), and environmental consciousness
(F(1, 123) D 0.06, ns).

Results
Controlling for attitude toward the webpage (F(1,120) D 12.44, p < 0.001), the ANOVA
shows no main effect of advertising executional elements evoking nature (F(1,120) D
1.06, ns) nor any interaction effect between topic knowledge and advertising executional
elements evoking nature (F(1,120) D 0.33, ns).
Appendix 3 provides the means for the DV (i.e. the brand’s ecological image). For
non-expert consumers, planned contrast tests indicate that the presence of advertising
execution elements evoking nature is no longer efficient: perceptions of the brand’s eco-
logical image are not significantly different in their presence (M(Present) D 4.35) vs. in
their absence (M(Absent) D 3.91, F(1,71) D 1.64, ns). They indicate the same pattern of
results for expert consumers, with similar perceptions of the brand’s ecological image in
the presence of advertising execution elements evoking nature (M(Present) D 4.16) or in
their absence (M(Absent) D 4.03, F(1,48) D 0.07, ns). H4 is fully supported. Tested against
the baseline scores obtained in Study 2, where no traffic-light labels were included, brand
ecological image scores are significantly lower for both non-expert (M(Rate) D 5.56,
M(Traffic-light) D 4.13, F(1,120) D 34.71, p < 0.001) and expert consumers (M(Rate) D
5.01, M(Traffic-light) D 4.18, F(1,96) D 8.04, p < 0.01). In other words, the traffic-light label
to convey environmental performance information is able to remove the misleading
effects of executional elements evoking nature.

Discussion
Collectively, the studies provide empirical evidence of a misleading effect from nature-
evoking executional elements on the webpage. Although they rely on a fictional brand,
the studies replicate a natural environment through the presentation of a complete web-
page and the recruitment of real consumers. Controlling for attitude toward the webpage
and relying on between-subject experimental designs offer control over the presentation
of the stimuli, and maximize the internal validity of the research. Study 1 shows that non-
expert but also, to a lesser degree, expert consumers with regards to the environment are
affected by nature-evoking executional cues on the webpage. Compared with a webpage
without green cues, an executionally greenwashed webpage generates greater perceptions
of the featured brand’s ecological image and in turn more positive brand attitudes. How-
ever, the main contribution of this research lies in the identification of moderators of this
effect. Study 2 shows that adding environmental performance information, as advocated
by the EC, can counterbalance the greenwashing effect but only among expert consumers.
Study 3 offers a more hopeful set of findings in that it shows that the combination of a
traffic-light representation with the raw information about emission rates is able to coun-
terbalance the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect across both experts and non-experts. We
further note that these studies present a rather conservative test of the hypotheses, because
of the very restrictive selection criterion used: only those who recalled the exact emission
rate displayed were included in the analyses.

Limitation and future research directions

Notwithstanding the support received for the majority of hypotheses, the studies contain
several limitations. The main limitation is that they operationalize nature-evoking
124 B. Parguel et al.

executional cues only as a set of executional elements (i.e. picture of a forest, birdsong,
and green tint areas), therefore showing a global effect of ‘executional greenwashing’.
Although this enhances the external validity of the stimuli, given that commercial web-
pages are usually multisensorial, the independent effect of each element cannot be
assessed. Studies should be replicated using independent executional elements, testing
separately auditory versus visual ones, the effects of which may be additive or interactive
(Tavassoli and Lee 2003), as well as testing different combinations of executional ele-
ments. Future research should also evaluate whether, as proposed in psychology, congru-
ent audio and visual information about greenness is processed faster than incongruent
cross-modal information (Frens, Opstal, and Van der Willigen 1995; Stein and Meredith
1993), and therefore leads to more heuristic processing, and in turn greater ‘executional
greenwashing’ effects.
A related limitation is that this research focused on only two types of environmental
information, a numerical rate and a traffic-light label. Future research could also attempt
to provide additional process evidence of why and how labelling information of different
types and formats are able to reduce ‘executional greenwashing’. This research suggests
additional work to deepen our theoretical understanding of the labels’ efficacy, perhaps
based on psychometric theory (e.g. anchor points, number of anchors). Testing other for-
mats or combination of formats would be useful, both from a theoretical and from an
applied standpoint.
Other limitations of the research lie in the reliance on a sample of French consumers
and on the operationalization of consumers’ knowledge in that context. The conceptual
model should be tested on samples across different countries, in particular in countries that
differ in terms of their level of environmental consciousness. The fact that experts in the
French samples reacted well to the rate of 149 g/km, when presented without a traffic-light,
despite the fact that it is merely an average rate, suggests that the EU’s communicated
objective for new cars of an average norm of 140 g/km (goal for 2008) and 130 g/km (goal
for 2015) may have inadvertently increased the level perceived as good. Additional
research testing different frames and rates could illuminate this possibility.
Finally, we note uneven participants’ gender distribution in the pre-test and studies 1 and
3 with women representing 69.9%, 38.0% and 62.0% respectively. But this limitation is
lessened by the fact that the gender distribution does not differ per experimental condition.

Theoretical contributions
Despite the limitations, this paper contributes to a better theoretical understanding of
greenwashing in two ways. First, it introduces the notion of ‘executional greenwashing’
and distinguishes it from ‘claim greenwashing’, which is based on the claim itself. The
results document that executional elements in advertising can mislead consumers into
perceiving the advertised brand as more ecological and in turn developing more positive
attitudinal responses to the brand. Hence, this more subtle but impactful form of green-
washing should be included in greenwashing definitions or approaches to regulate the
practices that have, to date, only referenced misleading verbal claims. Given that many
advertisements contain both verbal claims and executional cues, future research should
continue to assess the interplay between the two types of elements and their collective
impact on attention, processing and persuasion. Because the different processes may
reveal themselves differently in implicit and explicit responses, future research could
measure both explicit attitudes, as this research did, as well as implicit attitudes (Gawron-
ski and Bodenhausen 2006).
 International Journal of Advertising 125

Beyond providing empirical evidence of the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect, this

research documents the mediating process, through perceptions of the brand’s ecological
image, and two important moderators of the greenwashing effect with both an individual
difference, the consumer’s level of knowledge in the domain area, and via an additional
set of executional elements, in the form of more cognitive environmental information.
However, as this research documents, knowledge and environmental information interact
in affecting the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect. Amongst non-expert consumers, the
‘executional greenwashing’ effect persists even in the presence of information showing
poor environmental performance. Only in the case of two redundant cognitive cues (EPI
AND traffic-light) did the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect vanish amongst both expert
and non-expert consumers. The findings align with Delmas and Burbano’s (2011) recom-
mendation to increase transparency of environmental performance through mandated or
voluntarily disclosure and observation that not all types of disclosure are efficient; raw
information disclosure being useless for a vast majority of consumers.
The research is anchored on the latest developments within ELM research (Petty and
Wegener 1999) which emphasize elaboration likelihood as a continuum rather than a sim-
ple two-route model. Consumers, regardless of their level of expertise about an issue,
react to whatever information they are given. The results of studies 1 and 2 show that,
while experts do tend to be influenced by more cognitive elements, such as raw EPI, they
can also be influenced by affectively laden elements such as background images or sound
in the absence of any more rational information. And study 2 further shows that non-
experts also appear to be affected by the EPI rate even though they have little knowledge
of its meaning. These results reflect the importance of considering not only factors related
to motivation, such as one’s level of interest and involvement, but also one’s ability and
opportunity to process the information contained in a message (MacInnis and Jaworski
1989). This research shows that systematic processing is limited when opportunity is
reduced, for instance when little information is available as in study 1, or when ability is
low, such as with non-experts in study 2.
On the whole, the paper contributes to the growing body of evidence on the malleabil-
ity of consumers’ attitudes and the substantial impact of subtle contextual cues even in the
presence of more objective information. In the absence of environmental information,
even knowledgeable consumers may not be able to calibrate their responses to messages
in the presence of incongruous peripheral cues (Alba and Hutchinson 2000). Green execu-
tional cues, although processed more heuristically, even appear to pre-empt the system-
atic processing and the impact of more objective information. Conceptually, this pattern
of effects is a reminder of the importance of accounting for not just consumers’ ability to
process the information, as predicted by their knowledge of a relevant topic but, in this case,
of their ability to process cognitive information when it is presented in conjunction with
affective cues (Batra and Ray 1986; MacInnis and Jaworski 1989; MacInnis, Moorman, and
Jaworski 1991).
Finally, although prior research has suggested that greenwashing could increase scep-
ticism or mistrust about green claims in general, thus undermining even sincere CSR
strategies (Chen and Chang 2013; Cherry and Sneirson 2011; Lyon and Maxwell 2011),
our research does not show any perception of manipulation in the case of ‘executional
greenwashing’. Indeed, were this the case, consumers, especially expert ones, should
respond very negatively to a greenwashed advertisement displaying a very poor rate of
carbon emissions. Perhaps the absence of a backlash is because executional elements
evoking nature are commonly used by advertisers (Hartman, Apaolaza-Ib
a~nez, and
Alija 2013) and their subtlety, compared to verbal claims, does not trigger suspicion.
126 B. Parguel et al.

Consumers may not perceive them as intentionally designed to convey the notion of
ecology.

Practical implications
Given that the experiments reflect actual European Community ideas for limiting green-
house gas emissions, the results lend themselves to concrete public policy recommenda-
tions with regards to the regulation of green advertising. The finding that nature-evoking
executional cues actually mislead consumers, regardless of their level of topic knowledge,
demonstrates the need to incorporate this form of ‘executional greenwashing’ into defini-
tions of greenwashing. Furthermore, the findings show that despite being currently the
regulatory option of choice, providing environmental information is not sufficient to
counterbalance the effects of greenwashing when it is displayed as a raw figure only. The
European Directive is not sufficient to deter ‘executional greenwashing’ unless consum-
ers know the environmental norms very well (i.e. they are experts). Amongst the majority
of consumers who are not as knowledgeable, the EPI does not correct the greenwashing
effect. We posit, and our findings support, the proposition that EPI is too complex and
unable to help diagnose a poor environmental performance unless it is accompanied by a
graphic, easy to process and understand signal of environmental information: a traffic-
light label. This finding is hopeful because of the simplicity of its implementation. Two
arguments support the easy implementation if regulators only impose that a small space
of print advertising or promotional material is devoted to show the traffic-light label, in
its expanded form as tested in Study 3 for more elaborate leaflets, or in a compact ruler
version for print advertising, as the one displayed in Austria. First, this kind of label has
been well received in Europe on electric appliances, where it is compulsory, and in the
US where the Energy star program is also a success. These programs show that consumers
are already familiar with the visual label, understand the reason for their presence and the
content of the information. In a similar vein, in the US, the packaged food industry and
consumers alike have accepted nutritional labels. Second, this form of regulation does not
constrain advertisers’ creative teams as it authorizes all forms of executional elements.
Including the carbon emission label may even serve as a signal of their benevolence and
protect them against accusations. The only drawback of such a form of regulation is that
an independent office must be designated to perform audits of the carbon emission value
declared to ensure the veracity of the information.
Other forms of regulation could also be considered, beginning with the strict forbid-
ding of certain execution cues, following the French ban about the presentation of motor
vehicles in natural backgrounds in advertisements. This would call for additional work to
identify which executional elements used by advertisers are the most misleading but, in
practice, such a ban may be difficult and costly to monitor. A stronger approach, such as
that adopted by Norway, is the ban of green advertising for automotive vehicles. How-
ever, a complete ban on green advertising may be excessive because it may deter car mak-
ers from making a real effort to improve their cars’ carbon footprints.

Conclusion
The present research suggests a viable middle ground to regulate ‘executional green-
washing’, through the introduction of a traffic-light label displaying environmental per-
formance information in a specific part of the ad. This option offers a consensus between
the respect of advertisers’ freedom to create and differentiate brands through their
 International Journal of Advertising 127

communications campaigns while fulfilling the need to properly inform consumers and
consider them as active actors towards a more sustainable world.

Acknowledgements
This research received support from the Chair Performance des Organisations financed by the
AFNOR group, from the program MOVIDA Consommation et Modes de Vie Durables financed
by the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, and from Toluna
QuickSurveys for the pre-test data collection.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes
1. This neologism was introduced by Jay Westerveld to describe hotel chains’ hypocritical behav-
iour, inviting clients to reuse towels to preserve the environment, whereas they just want to
save money (Orange 2010; Pearson 2010).
2. See http://www.dacia.fr/gamme-dacia/logan/ (last accessed 10 January 2014).
3. See http://www.skoda.fr/modele/skoda-fabia (last accessed 10 January 2014).
4. For this measure, the reliability coefficient is the simple correlation between the two items.

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Appendix 1. Experimental stimuli

 International Journal of Advertising 133

Appendix 2. Factor loadings and reliability for all scales

Brand Attitude toward

Brand Environmental ecological the brand’s
Instrument attitude consciousness image webpage

 I like this carmaker. .898

 I think this brand is good. .875
 My opinion of this carmaker is .863
positive.
 When possible, I systematically .906
choose the product that has the
lowest negative impact on the
environment.
 I try not to buy from companies .901
that strongly pollute.
 When I have the choice between .868
two equivalent products, I always
wonder which one pollutes less
before buying.
 The carmaker Luna is concerned .885
with respect for the environment.
 I have the impression that the .868
carmaker Luna tries to respect the
environment.
 Luna vehicles are environmentally .724
friendly.
 I do not like this webpage. .906
 I do not enjoy reading this webpage. .887

Reliability (Cronbach alpha) Study 1 .947 .949 .884 .9094

Reliability (Cronbach alpha) Study 2 .954 .935 .875 .782
Reliability (Cronbach alpha) Study 3 .951 .952 .840 .705
134 B. Parguel et al.

Appendix 3. Dependent variable means and sample sizes per condition per study
(brand ecological image)

Study 1 (No EPI) N D 110

No nature evoking Nature evoking

Non experts 4.17 (1.09) N D 40 5.44 (1.00) N D 26

Experts 4.36 (1.00) N D 25 4.88 (1.14) N D 19

Study 2 (149 vs. 209 g/km) N D 189

No nature evoking Nature evoking

149 g/km 209 g/km 149 g/km 209 g/km

Non experts 5.23 (1.02) N D 38 4.78 (1.20) N D 39 5.87 (1.05) N D 13 5.34 (1.45) N D 29
Experts 5.10 (1.08) N D 21 2.89 (1.65) N D 9 5.10 (1.27) N D 29 3.73 (1.96) N D 11

Study 3 (149 g/km C traffic-light label) N D 125

No nature evoking Nature evoking

Non experts 3.81 (1.48) N D 37 4.45 (1.56) N D 37

Experts 4.08 (1.78) N D 24 4.11 (1.62) N D 27