Stains That Can’t be Washed: Empirically Evaluating Company’s Harm Inflicted by Greenwashing and Social Washing

Companies face consequences if they attempt to build a positive image among consumers based on false impressions or misleading information – the so-called “washing” strategies. Firstly, this article aims to identify the influence of such strategies on consumers’ perception of a company; secondly, it seeks to compare the effects of green and social washing. We hypothesize that both greenwashing and social washing lead consumers to negatively evaluate a company on several dimensions (i.e., perceived brand quality, perceived financial performance, attitude toward the brand, and willingness to buy its products). To test our hypotheses, we conducted an experiment that presented 590 respondents with one of three situations that reflected the use of greenwashing, social washing, or neither. We found that both greenwashing and social washing correlated with negative evaluations of the offending company; however, greenwashing was more harmful for brand image than social washing.