School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, USA.
Consumer Behavior Group, Institute for Environmental Decisions, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zrich, Switzerland.
J Environ Manage. 2020 Apr 15;260:110047. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.110047. Epub 2020 Feb 10.
When confronted with concerns or backlash as a result of their environmental or sustainability performance, companies may elect to address them head-on by directly correcting their real or perceived misdeeds. However, it is often the case that businesses are unwilling or unable to address their transgressions directly; in these cases, they may elect to draw attention to indirect substantiality benefits unfolding in areas unrelated to where the concerns or backlash initially arose. In this study, we sought to test the effect of these indirect and direct responses to sustainability challenges on two dependent variables: public perception of company reputation, and their willingness to grant a company "social license" for future business activities. Compared to a business-as-usual control condition, and across three company contexts, consumers provided favorable ratings of reputation, and were willing to grant social license, when companies responded indirectly to a sustainability challenge. These results highlight the powerful effect of indirect responses, which may be perceived as "greenwash", and the importance of intuitive judgmental heuristics and individual value orientations when consumers form impressions about corporate sustainability.
当企业面临环境或可持续性表现方面的问题或负面反馈时，他们可能会选择直接处理这些问题，纠正实际或被认为的不当行为。然而，很多时候企业不愿意或无法直接处理他们的违规行为；在这种情况下，他们可能会选择关注与最初出现问题或负面反馈无关的领域中正在展开的间接实质性利益。在这项研究中，我们试图测试对可持续性挑战的这些间接和直接回应对两个因变量的影响：公众对公司声誉的看法，以及他们对公司未来业务活动授予“社会许可”的意愿。与常规商业控制条件相比，在三个公司背景下，当公司对可持续性挑战做出间接回应时，消费者对声誉的评价更高，并愿意授予社会许可。这些结果突出了间接回应的强大效果，这种回应可能被视为“绿色清洗”，以及当消费者对企业可持续性形成印象时，直觉判断启发式和个人价值取向的重要性。
