Companies in the energy sector face a dilemma regarding how to communicate their environmental policies to the public. Communicating that environmental policies and activities are motivated by concern for the environment could elicit positive reactions, but may also lead to accusations of corporate greenwashingthe idea that companies deliberately frame their activities as 'green' in order to look environmentally friendly. The results of three experiments demonstrate that people easily suspect greenwashing when an energy company invests in environmental measures. Importantly, suspicions of corporate greenwashing are reduced by acknowledging economic motives instead of communicating environmental motives for such investments. Suspicion of strategic organizational behavior mediates the effect of communicated motive on perceived corporate greenwashing. This indirect effect occurs primarily among people who are not by nature very skeptical about organizational communications in general. These findings highlight the need to think carefully about how to communicate corporate environmental policies to the public.

Public trust in organizations that are involved in the management and use of new technologies affects lay judgments about the risks and benefits associated with these technologies. In turn, judgments about risks and benefits influence lay attitudes toward these technologies. The validity of this (indirect) effect of trust on lay attitudes toward new technologies, which is referred to as the causal chain account of trust, has up till now only been examined in correlational research. The two studies reported in this article used an experimental approach to more specifically test the causal chain account of trust in the context of carbon dioxide capture and storage technology (CCS). Complementing existing literature, the current studies explicitly distinguished between two different types of trust in organizations: competence-based trust (Study 1) and integrity-based trust (Study 2). In line with predictions, results showed that the organizational position regarding CCS implementation (pro versus con) more strongly affected people's risk and benefit perceptions and their subsequent acceptance of CCS when competence-based trust was high rather than low. In contrast, the organizational position had a greater impact on people's level of CCS acceptance when integrity-based trust was low rather than high.

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