Abstract

Today, using a sophisticated publicity, corporations aim to generate an image of respect to the environment in consumer’s minds. These images do not necessarily match with reality. It is called “Greenwashing” when a company amplifies selectively information with an environmental positive connotation aiming to produce a distorted image with a “green” bias. This article pretends to analyze these phenomena and to evaluate their existence, importance and influence on consumer’s decisions through the design of a methodology and piloting it with a population of students. The results point out that the images transmitted by the publicity of five selected corporations contrasts with examples of poor management, and this manipulation affects the perception of the surveyed students. Students of environmental sciences present a slightly higher resistance against Greenwashing because of their formation, but the majority incorporates the official discourse based on corporate public relationship.