How Corporate Sharewashing Practices Undermine Consumer Trust

Hawlitschek, Florian; Stofberg, Nicole; Teubner, Timm; Tu, Patrick and Weinhardt, Christof (2018): How Corporate Sharewashing Practices Undermine Consumer Trust. In: Sustainability, Vol. 10, No. 8, 2638

Abstract

Sharewashing describes a platform's act of misleading consumers by purposely portraying an image of social and ecological principles while the platform's business model does not necessarily involve them. Drawing on Corporate Social Responsibility and Green Marketing literature, we propose and evaluate a research model for investigating the impact of sharewashing perceptions on consumer trust. Based on survey data from 145 millennials, our results reveal a significant negative effect of sharewashing perceptions on consumer trust, partially mediated by perceptions of risk and confusion. We discuss our findings in view of their practical and strategic relevance to sharing economy platform operators.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics > Statistics
• Subjects: 500 Science > 510 Mathematics
• ISSN: 2071-1050
• Language: English