Understanding the Effects of Corporate Environmental Communication on Jobseekers

Jennifer L. Robertson, Talib Karamally, Bonnie Simpson and A. Wren Montgomery

Business Strategy and the Environment, 2025, vol. 34, issue 8, 9844-9862

Abstract: Misleading corporate environmental claims, such as greenwashing, continue to increase, and the question of how jobseekers are affected by organizational greenwashing remains understudied. The present research conducts an experimental study on real jobseekers through Amazon Cloud Research, across two phases of online survey research. Participants viewed a fictitious corporation's website, which randomly exposed one of either a misleading environmental claim (greenwashing), an environmental claim substantiated by a neutral third party, or no environmental claim (i.e., control). Findings demonstrate that participants exposed to greenwashing reported higher levels of organizational cynicism when compared to control and substantiated claim conditions. Further, when greenwashing and control conditions were contrasted, the need for cognition moderated the link between claim and organizational cynicism, which predicts jobseekers' organization evaluations and environmental engagement. When greenwashing and substantiated conditions were contrasted, organizational cynicism mediates the effect of claim on organization evaluations and environmental engagement.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.70094

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:34:y:2025:i:8:p:9844-9862

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1002/(ISSN)1099-0836

Access Statistics for this article

Business Strategy and the Environment is currently edited by Richard Welford

More articles in Business Strategy and the Environment from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().