The power of greenwashing: Influences of corporate marketing on partisan environmental attitudes

This research seeks to better understand the extent to which corporate marketing influences public attitudes towards policy within a partisan framework. Existing literature establishes the presence of significant corporate influence in government (campaign finance, lobbying) and the influence of corporate marketing on consumer attitudes (towards corporations themselves). Whilst these corporation/government and corporation/consumer relationships have been explored, this research attempts to investigate the flow of indirect influence from corporation to consumer to government. The scope of this project focuses on the context of ‘greenwashing’ (marketing which expresses environmental values to attract sympathetic consumers) and its potential to alter attitudes towards corporate environmental regulation. More specifically, this research will use a large-n survey experiment to examine whether green marketing can influence public trust in corporate environmental responsibility, and therefore potentially pre-empt public demands for more stringent regulatory policy.