Different shades of green consciousness in product evaluations
The sustainability labelling on the front of a package featured in a print advertisement may influence consumers’ product evaluations and purchase decisions. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that consumers seem to evaluate the sustainability claim more favourably if the advertisement highlights the personal impact on them.
Moreover, environmental involvement appears to further moderate the effects of sustainability claims and environmental impact framing. The interactions that emerged in this study suggest that sustainability labelling effects constitute a complex phenomenon that warrants future research.
The full paper is at: Yoon-Na Cho. 2015. Different Shades of Green Consciousness: The Interplay of Sustainability Labeling and Environmental Impact on Product Evaluations.
Journal of Business Ethics, 128(1), 73-82.
Effects of business greening and green IT capital on competitiveness
Despite the fact that the association between business greening and its competitiveness has been confirmed, the effects of green IT capital on the relationship between business greening and competitiveness have largely not been investigated by researchers. To address this gap in the research, this study introduces and defines the new concept of green IT capital to bridge the gap for business greening.
The results of a sample survey of 148 companies from the top 1,000 manufacturers in Taiwan confirmed that the degree of business greening has significant positive effects on business investment in green IT human capital, green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital as well as on business competitiveness. In addition, the three dimensions of green IT capital positively relate to business competitiveness. In mediating effect, green IT relational capital partially mediates the links between the degree of business greening and business competitiveness.
More information is available at: Shun-Pin Chuang and Sun-Jen Huang. 2015. Effects of Business Greening and Green IT Capital on Business Competitiveness.
Journal of Business Ethics, 128(1), 221-231.
Does the market value greenwashing in China?
Apparently not. Xingqiang Du writes that in China, many firms advertise that they follow environmentally friendly practices to cover their true activities, a practice called greenwashing, which can cause the public to doubt the sincerity of green messages. In this study, Du investigated how the market values greenwashing and further examined whether corporate environmental performance can explain different and asymmetric market reactions to environmentally friendly and unfriendly firms.
Using a sample from the Chinese stock market, Du provides strong evidence to show that greenwashing is significantly negatively associated with cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) around the exposure of greenwashing. In addition, corporate environmental performance is significantly positively associated with CAR around the exposure of greenwashing. Furthermore, the findings suggest that corporate environmental performance has two distinct effects on CAR around the exposure of greenwashing: the competitive effect for environmentally friendly firms and the contagious effect for potential environmental wrongdoers, respectively. The results are robust to various sensitivity tests.
For more information, see: Xingqiang Du. 2015. How the Market Values Greenwashing? Evidence from China.
Journal of Business Ethics, 128(3), 547-574.
Encouraging sustainability by empowering employees
Eric Lamm, Jennifer Tosti-Kharas and Cynthia King contribute to the ongoing discussion about sustainability behaviours by introducing the construct of perceived organisational support toward the environment (POS-E). They propose and empirically test an integrated model about the association of POS-E with employees’ organisational citizenship behaviours toward the environment (OCB-E), as well as about job attitudes.
Results indicated that POS-E was positively related to OCB-E, job satisfaction, organisational identification and psychological empowerment, and negatively related to turnover intentions. The study also found that psychological empowerment partially mediated the relationship between POS-E and the dependent variables. The researchers discuss the theoretical and practical implications for managers seeking to encourage sustainability in their organisations.
Further details are in: Eric Lamm, Jennifer Tosti-Kharas and Cynthia E. King. 2015. Empowering Employee Sustainability: Perceived Organizational Support Toward the Environment.
Journal of Business Ethics, 128(1), 207-220.