Green Skies or Greenwashing? A Critical Systematic Review of Airline Sustainability Claims, Perceived Credibility, Passenger Trust and Willingness to Pay

Abstract

Background: To assess the effectiveness of the strategies used to achieve this. Rationale: Aviation is facing ever-greater pressure to reduce its environmental footprint, while still meeting passenger demand and commercial viability. So, airlines use these assertions about sustainable aviation fuel, carbon offsets, fleet efficiency, emissions reduction and waste reduction, as well as net-zero commitments, to communicate sustainability. Such statements are, however, increasingly disputed as the credibility of environmental communication can be undermined by the focus on selective benefits and the hiding of absolute emission, uncertainty and the limits of mitigation. Methods: This critical systematic review collates the research regarding airline sustainability claims, greenwashing, environmental credibility, passenger trusts in and willingness to pay for green air travel. Based on this literature, the study has considered five analytical dimensions: claim transparency, perceived greenwashing, source credibility, passenger trust and willingness to pay. Specific focus is on the airline-specific evidence, communication on carbon-offsets, sustainable aviation fuel and green advertising and consumer research recently conducted. Results: Literature reports that sustainability communication is likely to elicit positive responses from consumers if it is credible, reliable and verifiable and specific. On the other hand, ambiguous and hyperbole or compensation-based claims may lead to an impression of “greenwashing” and lower brand assessments, behavioral intentions and trust. There is a willingness on the part of passengers to pay for environmental improvements but this is subject to the credibility, size and transparency of the environmental benefit. There is recent evidence from meta-analysis that offsetting schemes with a high degree of credibility can elicit significantly higher willingness to pay than schemes of lower credibility. Conclusion: The conclusion, then, is not that claims of sustainability are being made by airlines, it's that there is a credibility gap between the air industry's self-reported environmental performance and real environmental results. The review suggests a Green Airline Credibility-Trust-TP (GACT-WTP) framework which connects the specificity of the claims, the quality of evidence, feelings of greenwashing and finally, credibility and passenger trust and willingness to pay. The framework sees credibility as the key enabler of the transformation of sustainability communication into economic value-or its lack thereof.