The effect of eco-labels in contrast to greenwashing of personal care products using green visual attributes on e-commerce platforms. Understanding the purchasing intentions of consumers in the Netherlands

With the increasing environmental problems and the growing demand for eco-friendly products, green businesses are seen to be implementing green marketing strategies to highlight their green products. However, this also results in many businesses greenwashing their products to increase sales, which is why eco-labels are used to prove the authenticity of green products and fight greenwashing practices. Eco-labels are labels provided by third parties after strict examination of environmental requirements on the product or service. Despite substantial studies on green marketing and greenwashing, mainly focused on advertising and packaging, this study aims to fill the gap in the literature by explicitly focusing on the effectiveness of eco-labels in contrast to greenwashing using green visual attributes on e-commerce platforms. Additionally, during the pandemic, personal care products (PCPs) showed increasing sales, which is why this industry is an interesting field to look at. Drawing upon the theories of green marketing, greenwashing, and the effect of environmental concern on purchasing intentions, hypotheses were formulated and a theoretical model was built and tested. This eventually helped answer the research question regarding the effectiveness of ecolabels in contrast to greenwashing using green visual attributes. Hence, a between-subjects experiment is carried out in the form of an online survey with seven experimental conditions. After data cleaning, a total of 234 participants (N = 234) were included in this research, ensuring that each condition had at least 30 participants. The findings showed no significant difference in the purchasing intentions between eco-labeled PCPs and greenwashed PCPs using green visual attributes. In addition, environmental concern also found no moderating effect on the purchasing intentions on eco-labeled or greenwashed PCP using green visual attributes. Thus, it can be concluded that eco-labels do not affect the online purchasing intentions of consumers in the Netherlands and that environmental concern has no moderating effect. Overall, the results provided an in-depth understanding of the effectiveness of eco-labels and green visual attributes, which can act as a base for future research.