Greenwashing and public demand for government regulation

Environmental governance in many high-income democracies relies to some extent on self-regulation by the private sector. Yet, this policy mode is contested and proponents of top-down government regulation argue that voluntary corporate sustainability commitments remain shallow and rarely are more than greenwashing. I assess to what extent firms’ business conduct is subject to societal checks and balances, in particular, whether public support for regulation constitutes a control mechanism of corporate contributions to environmental goods. I rely on an original survey experiment (N = 2112) conducted with a representative sample of the Swiss voting population. The analysis shows that accusing firms of greenwashing reduces both citizens’ perceived effectiveness of self-regulation and perceived synergy of corporate profits and environmental protection. However, this attitudinal shift only translates into modest updates in respondents’ policy preferences. As a result, short-run shifts in public support for regulation are an unlikely societal control mechanism of business conduct.