The factors affecting greenwashing perception and consumer reactions towards brands in greenwashing practices: An application through serious game

This study aims to examine the effects of sustainable consumption behavior, consumer cynicism and socio-demographic factors on consumers' greenwashing perception and reactions to brands that engage in greenwashing. In this direction, data was collected through serious game and analyzes were carried out on 386 consumers. The study consists of three chapters. In the first chapter explains the basic concepts relating to the variables. The second chapter presents the hypotheses and research model, the population and sample, data collection tools and techniques, coding and arrangement of the data, analysis methods and assumptions. In the third chapter, there are descriptive statistics regarding sampling, determination of missing values, outliers and influential observations, validity and reliability study, normality tests and research findings. As a result of the research, it has been determined that consumer cynicism and sustainable consumption behavior have a significant difference in the savings, environmental awareness and unneeded consumption dimensions according to the socio demographic characteristics of the consumers. It has been observed that variables as environmental awareness, unneeded consumption, age group and education level are effective on greenwashing perception. Consumer cynicism does not have a statistically significant effect on reactions to brands that have the greenwashing sins of hidden trade, no proof, vagueness, false labels, irrelevance, lesser of two evils and fibbing; the effect of greenwashing perception level, sustainable consumption behavior dimensions and socio-demographic factors differ according to each sin and is generally found to be partially effective.