The Cognitive Mechanics of Executional Greenwashing: Developing a Diagnostic Psychological Tool to Assess Consumer Vulnerability to Deceptive Environmental Framing

• Asher Noah

  covenant University

  Author

The proliferation of executional greenwashing—the strategic use of nature-evoking imagery and peripheral environmental cues to imply sustainability without substantive claims—represents a significant challenge to consumer protection and sustainable consumption. While existing regulatory frameworks address explicit claim-based misrepresentation, they remain ill-equipped to address the cognitive vulnerabilities that make consumers susceptible to visual and associative deception. This study addresses this gap by developing and validating a diagnostic psychological instrument, the Greenwashing Susceptibility Assessment (GSA), designed to measure consumer vulnerability to executional greenwashing. Drawing on dual-process theory, environmental psychology, and persuasion research, the GSA integrates three psychometric scales measuring heuristic processing proneness, environmental category activation, and visual cue sensitivity. The instrument was validated through a three-phase design-based research methodology involving 368 participants across controlled experimental conditions. Results demonstrate that the GSA achieves 89.4% accuracy in predicting consumer susceptibility to executional greenwashing, with heuristic processing proneness emerging as the strongest predictor (β = 0.41, p < .001). The findings contribute a validated diagnostic framework for pre-campaign risk assessment and offer practical guidance for regulators and practitioners seeking to identify vulnerable consumer segments. The GSA provides an evidence-based mechanism for operationalizing consumer protection in green marketing contexts, addressing a critical gap in current regulatory and industry practice .

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Copyright (c) 2026 Asher Noah (Author)

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