Greenwashing and consumer behavior: An empirically designed mediation analysis

The emergence and spread of green marketing is attributed to environmental events. Accordingly, the increasing demand for green products makes green consumer behavior an important area to be examined. With the increase in demand for green products, the number of organizations that communicate green and engage in deceptive practices is increasing, although there is no green transformation in their processes. According to the literature, such practices are defined as greenwashing. Environmentally conscious and conscious consumers are expected to be concerned about the environment and to approach products claimed to be green with suspicion. Greenwashing is often a very difficult practice to perceive because it conveys a positive signal to the other party in terms of content. The elements in the message content act as signals for consumers and provide consumers with information about the product. In this study, the behavior of consumers was examined by using two different advertising posters with and without greenwashing. The mediating roles of factors such as perception of greenwashing, suspicion of green advertisements, green trust and green concern on these behaviors were also tested within the framework of signaling theory. The sample was determined by judgemental sampling. The advertising posters prepared within the scope of the research were presented to the experimental and control groups online and then they were asked to answer the questions in the questionnaire form. As a result of the research, data were collected from 279 participants. The results of the analyses confirmed the mediating effect of green trust only out of the four hypotheses tested. It was found that the green purchasing intentions of the participants (experimental group and control group) who answered the questions posed to them by examining two different advertising posters in the experimental setup, their willingness to pay more for green products and their green word-of-mouth marketing intentions did not differ significantly with the mediating effect of greenwashing, feelings of suspicion towards green advertisements and feelings of green anxiety, only green trust feelings, It was observed that it had a significantly different mediating effect on their behavior between the experimental and control groups. The results of the independent sample t-test for the tested variables, similar to the mediation analysis, revealed that there was a significant difference between the group averages only for green confidence, and it was observed that the participants in the experimental and control groups exhibited similar characteristics on the basis of the other three variables. viii Keywords: Green Marketing, Perceived Greenwashing, Signal Theory, Green Purchase Intent