How to shape consumer reaction to corporate environmental communications: Accentuating the negative to build trust can elicit favorable intentions and behaviors

Giovanni Pino, Giampaolo Viglia, Rajan Nataraajan, Alessandro M. Peluso, and Marco Pichierri

Companies may inform consumers about their pro-environmental actions by using either positively or negatively framed messages that, respectively, highlight the possible benefits deriving from such actions versus the drawbacks deriving from inaction.
Pino et al.

Management Slant

  • Negatively framed messages about a company’s pro-environmental actions exert a positive effect on the company’s perceived trustworthiness.
  • This positive effect, in turn, favorably influences consumers’ intentions and behaviors toward the company.
  • The overall effect is statistically significant for consumers who are particularly concerned about the environment and who perceive the company as potentially harmful to the environment.

Introduction

With the growing concern for the impact of production activities on the natural environment (European Union, 2021), consumers are paying increasing attention to companies’ ­pro-environmental actions (WARC, 2019) and environmental communication; that is, “those disclosures that relate...

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