‘They Only Get the Feed That Grows on Our Farm’: A Survey Experiment on Government-Subsidized Greenwashing of Swiss Meat and Agricultural Policy

Increased consumer concern about environmental issues has led to a surge in green advertising, including misleading forms known as greenwashing. Definitions of greenwashing have mostly focused on companies misleading consumers about products, and existing empirical analyses of greenwashing effects have mostly used fabricated ad materials referring to fictitious products. The objective of the present paper is to use ad material from an actual ad campaign to examine joint greenwashing, by an industry organization and a national government, of consumer products and public policies. Using an actual government-subsidized video commercial for ‘Swiss meat’ as an example, the present paper examines greenwashing targeting both consumers and citizens to influence their product choices and policy opinions. Based on an online survey of an age- and gender-representative sample ( n = 637), we measured aspects of consumer knowledge that would enable the consumers to put the ad’s message in perspective, perceptions of the ad, and beliefs about Swiss meat production. Furthermore, we used a two-factorial experimental design to examine how the video commercial and objective product information affected policy opinions relative to control treatments. We find that the consumers strongly overestimated the true percentage of Swiss farms that used the environmentally friendly feeding system featured in the ad. Regarding perceptions, 52% of the respondents ‘rather’ or ‘fully’ agreed with the statement ‘the ad conveys a realistic image of Swiss meat production’, and 41% ‘rather’ or ‘fully’ agreed with the statement ‘the ad shows the production of Swiss beef as it is’. Regarding beliefs, 51% of the respondents ‘partly’, ‘rather’, or ‘fully’ agreed that ‘more meat production in Switzerland is good for the environment’. The video commercial did not influence beliefs about Swiss meat but changed policy opinions in the favor of government subsidies for the advertisement of Swiss meat. The information treatment influenced policy opinions in the opposite direction but did not decrease the effect of the misleading ad. Other significant predictors of support for increased meat subsidies included frequent meat consumption, low factual knowledge, and positive product beliefs. The results of the survey indicate that the ad campaign may have unduly influenced perceptions of Swiss meat production and public opinion about agricultural policy. The findings raise concerns about the current self-regulation of the communication industry and joint private and public advertising of Swiss agricultural products and policies.