Social cynicism,greenwashing, and trust in green clothing brands

This research develops a theoretical model of the effect of social cynicism as a personality trait on trust in green clothing brands. We conducted an online survey of a representative Australian sample to test the hypothesized relationships. Our findings confirmed that social cynicism affected green brand trust negatively and that this effect can be explained by an increase in perceived greenwashing. Conspicuous consumption moderates this indirect influence. This mediated influence decreased when conspicuous consumption was more salient. Findings provide important practical insights for brand managers intending to avoid a decrease in brand trust regarding garments marketed with sustainability claims.     

Poverty decompositions with counterfactual income and inequality dynamics

Traditional poverty accounting decomposes changes in a country's poverty headcount ratio into changes in income and inequality. We argue that this approach is unsatisfactory from the perspective of policy analysis because it compares a country in two points of time without taking the country's initial situation, and hence its potential for poverty reduction, into account. We thus suggest comparing traditional poverty decompositions with a counterfactual situation. This counterfactual indicates what a country starting from its initial situation could be expected to achieve in terms of income, inequality, and, hence, poverty developments. We construct those counterfactuals by modeling income and inequality trends characterized by convergence and a “Kuznets” relationship between inequality and development. Parameters in those relationships are estimated using PovcalNet survey data from 144 countries and we construct our counterfactual poverty predictions for 71 developing countries. While there is overall a tight relationship between actual developments and counterfactuals, we identify several cases, where both deviate from each other and discuss the policy implications. We also check for commonalities in differently performing countries and find that those who fell particularly short of expectations often underwent political transition and state fragility.