Technologie de la mode et ingénierie textile

Taiwanese Millennials Perception of Green Advertising in the Context of Outdoor Apparel in Taipei

Alison Anne Falk and Jocelyn HC Chen

Objective: This research was developed to discover the environmental concerns, the consumption behavior and knowledge of green washing of Taiwanese millennial consumers living in Taipei. It was inspired by the increasing concerns surrounding climate change.

Methods: A questionnaire was given to a minimum of 100 Taiwanese consumers at random and analyzed using a regression to measure the degree of awareness and a 2 × 2 × 2 Factorial Design was utilized to assess perceived deception, ethical judgment, attitude towards the advertisement, attitude towards the brand [1].

Results: The data proved that knowledge and/or awareness of environmental issues to be insignificantly linked to the purchase of eco-friendly products. The data from the second study, which utilized a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design highlighted this finding even further by proving that Taiwanese millennial consumers living in Taipei were not able to distinguish associative claims from substantive claims and are more favorable towards green advertisements from a lesser-known local brand utilizing a domestic environmental issue. Substantive claims were found to be slightly more favorable overall.

Conclusions: Being that Taiwanese millennial consumers are not able to strongly identify green washed ads from an authentic substantive claim a company is promoting, it is easy to assume that window-dressing the brand to emit environmentally friendly characteristics will produce the same effects as advertisements
promoting authentic substrative claims.