Strategic trade-offs in environmental communication between greenwashing and greenhushing: A conceptual framework[Les arbitrages stratégiques de la communication environnementale entre greenwashing et greenhushing : une approche conceptuelle]

In response to increasing demands for sustainable development, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and environmental transparency, organizations face increasingly complex trade-offs when defining their environmental communication strategies. Although literature has traditionally examined greenwashing and greenhushing as two distinct phenomena, this perspective remains insufficient to explain the mechanisms underlying organizations' communication choices when confronted with often competing demands for legitimacy, credibility, and transparency. Drawing on a critical and integrative literature review, this study develops a conceptual model grounded in stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, and signaling theory to elucidate the strategic trade-offs that shape environmental communication strategies. The proposed model conceptualizes organizations' positioning as the outcome of strategic trade-off among institutional pressures, stakeholder expectations, the credibility of environmental signals, and perceived reputational risks. It further argues that greenwashing and greenhushing represent opposite ends of a continuum of environmental communication strategies, along which organizations adjust their level of transparency in response to organizational and institutional context. Five research propositions are developed to facilitate the empirical validation of the proposed model. This paper contributes to the organizational communication literature through a conceptual framework for understanding environmental communication strategies from the perspective of organizations strategic trade-offs.