Is It Effective for Companies to Pretend to Care for the Environment? Research on the Impact of Corporate Environmental Claims on Word-of-mouth Recommendation

Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, People’s Republic of China

^* e-mail: zhaoyichen@stu.scu.edu.cn

Abstract

In the era of Internet business, online word-of-mouth recommendation has become a key factor affecting consumers’ decision-making. Enterprises increase consumers’ willingness to recommend their brands by word of mouth in various ways. This paper mainly studies the influence of corporate environmental claims on consumers’ intention of word-of-mouth recommendation, and explores the roles of different advertising appeals in such process. Independent sample T-test, regression analysis, and cross-test analysis were assumed to study the differences of consumers’ word-of-mouth recommendation intention in response to different environmental claims and the mediating effect of green trust in influencing the consumers. The results showed that: consumers are more willing to recommend a brand by word-of-mouth when facing substantive environmental claims than associative environmental claims, and in this process, green trust serves as a mediator between corporate environmental claims and consumers’word-of-mouth recommendation intention; environmental advertising by green value appeal can encourage more word-of-mouth recommendation intention than environmental advertising by fear appeal.