Green Leader or Green Liar? Differentiation and the role of NGOs

Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Abstract: This paper addresses how corporate environmentalism can be a means of differentiation and of green-washing. Since consumers can seldom directly observe a firm's environmental quality (a problem not easily solved through eco-labeling), published environmental reports and advertising can mislead them. As a result, the role of the NGO becomes both crucial and ambiguous. On the one hand, by helping to increase consumer awareness, NGOs enlarge the market share of green differentiated firms. On the other hand, the risk that consumers will punish a firm perceived to be supplying inaccurate environmental information may bring about the paradoxical result of discouraging differentiation efforts

Keywords: Differentiation; environmental concern; imperfect competition; quality; advertising; NGO (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L12 L15 L31 M37 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2010-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-com, nep-env and nep-mkt
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http://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2010/10097.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Green Leader or Green Liar? Differentiation and the role of NGOs (2010)
Working Paper: Green Leader or Green Liar? Differentiation and the role of NGOs (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mse:cesdoc:10097

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