Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: As consumer awareness of sustainability increases, companies are spending more time and money claiming their products or services are more environmentally friendly than other similar products on the market. However, a substantial number of those claims used for advertising and marketing purposes may be misleading or false. While there are organizations that currently provide environmental claim validation services to increase trust in the green marketplace, the challenges in validation of these environmental claims have not been comprehensively examined. This paper explores three major challenges in validating sustainable products and services: 1) the risk of validating erroneous environmental claims, 2) the difficulty of balancing the trade-offs in multi-attribute environmental claim validations, and 3) the challenge of developing protocols for innovative claims within a reasonable time frame. The authors use three real-world examples – evaluation of a longevity claim (and associated reduced environmental impacts) of a product, development of a multi-attribute standard, and construction of test procedures in the absence of an existing standard. Results demonstrate that validations and certifications by dedicated third parties may effectively improve perceptions of trust in greener product claims. These initial findings aim to inform a variety of policy decision-making and potentially help to lay the foundation for establishing rules and regulations for environmental claims in green markets.
Source: Figshare
Authors: ISSST, Proc., Wang, Xue, F. Hoffman III, William, Gaustad, Gabrielle, Griffiths, Angela
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Underwriters Laboratories
OpenAlex ID: W6977163058