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BIJ
28,6
1934
Received 23 July 2020
Revised 7 November 2020
Accepted 28 November 2020
Benchmarking: An International
Journal
Vol. 28 No. 6, 2021
pp. 1934-1958
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1463-5771
DOI 10.1108/BIJ-07-2020-0380
Three decades of green
advertising – a review of literature
and bibliometric analysis
Neha Dhruv Agarwal
Indira School of Business Studies PGDM, Pune, India, and
V.V. Ravi Kumar
Symbiosis Institute of Business Management,
Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the research which has been done during the
past three decades on the topic of green advertising and identify gaps for future research.
Design/methodology/approach – The methodology that has been adopted for analysis is two-pronged – the
first being a literature review with tabulation of data using excel sheets and bar graphs and the second being a
bibliometric review using the software VOSviewer. Both approaches analyze the number of citations,
keywords, authors, journals and countries. A database of 113 articles from 1990 to 2020 is generated from Web
of Science.
Findings – Major contributors to the topic of green advertising research have been identified. Thematic
classification is created to understand the subtopics of green advertising. Under this classification, nine
subtopics have been identified. Six core research gaps have been identified for future research in the area of
green advertising.
Practical implications – The study helps identify where green advertising research is being conducted, its
growth potential and future prospects. This research work will enable the industry to gain new insights into
this emerging field of green advertising for incorporating the same in their advertising campaigns in view of
growing consumer concerns on environment.
Originality/value – The paper provides a comprehensive overview of the current status of research in green
advertising. The paper is unique as it is the only review on the topic of green advertising. Given the increasing
trend of going green among consumers, the paper adds tremendous value to the field of green advertising.
Keywords Green marketing, Skepticism, Bibliometric, Citation, Green advertising, Green claims
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
Notable management scholars such as Peter Drucker and Philip Kotler acknowledged the
social impact of marketing as a part of a firm’s responsibility (Drucker, 1974; Kotler, 1972).
According to Kotler et al. (2005) “the principle of societal marketing holds that the role of an
organization is to assess the desires, wishes and expectations of the target audience and to
produce the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors, in a
manner that preserves and improves the well-being of customers and society.” The concept
has its roots in the 1970s. In his Harvard Business Review article published in the year 1972
“What consumerism means for marketers” Philip Kotler first explained societal marketing
and its impact on consumerism (Kotler, 1972). From societal marketing the trend transitioned
to sustainable development. The term sustainable development was defined in the 1987
World Commission for Environment and Development and its Brundtland Report, also
known as “Our Common Future,” as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations, 1987). By 2019,
world business leaders rethought their corporate purpose and expressed public commitment
to provide stakeholders, not just shareholders, with long-term value (Business
Roundtable, 2019).
 The research on sustainable development is vast and continues even today. It includes Three decades
sustainable production, packaging, distribution, consumption and disposal of goods and of green
services (Menon and Menon, 1997). One of the aspects of sustainable development is
identified as green marketing. This research indicates that more than a decade after the
advertising
introduction of the societal marketing concept and soon after the advent of sustainability the
term green marketing came into prominence. Lazer (1969) was the first to use the term green
marketing as a societal marketing aspect that tackles the limited availability of natural
resources, the impact of conventional marketing on our eco-system and the greening of the 1935
various aspects of conventional marketing. Green advertising which is one of the facets of
green marketing started getting mentioned in published research studies by 1990 (Peattie,
1990; Gray, 1990). Table 1 displays the usage of the terms green marketing and green
advertising in the title of academic writings over time.
Google Scholar shows five results for “Green Advertising” in the 1980s which increases to
377 results by 2020 as per data presented in Table 1.
The number of green products sold in the market has also shown an increasing trend. The
number of green products increased from 2,700 to 4,700 in the period of one year from 2009 to
2010. This was a growth of more than 73% (Terrachoice, 2010). Numerous surveys indicate that
many US customers are willing to pay more for “green” goods (e.g. Feinberg et al., 2008; Integer
Group and M/A/R/C Research, 2011; Mintel, 2010). Polls show that consumers in China (WPP,
2016), Japan (McKinsey, 2011) and Europe (Food Drink Europe, 2011) are finding different
methods to incorporate sustainability into their lives. However, this pattern is not as clear, as
research also shows that green goals do not always turn into purchase intentions (The green
evolution, 2011; Lindqvist, 2010). For example, the study by Neilson in 2011 reports that half of the
Americans prefer environmentally friendly products but only 12% of consumers are willing to
pay more for them (Bickart and Ruth, 2012). In another survey it was found that 65% respondents
said they wanted to purchase green brands whereas only 26% actually did so (White et al., 2019).
Thus, firms need to understand the right combination of advertising strategies to use in order to
persuade consumers to buy green products. Green advertising enables companies to project
themselves as marketers of green products. In view of the reasons cited above, understanding and
practicing green advertising is the need of the hour due to heightened customer awareness about
green products and therein stems the need for this study. The importance of this study can be
gauged from the fact that green consciousness among customers is only increasing by the day.
Additionally, a systematic review of literature on this topic is not yet done.

2. Literature review
In layman’s terms, green advertising is the use of environment-friendly claims in the advertising
message to influence the consumer to purchase the product. These environmentally friendly

Academic Academic Academic Academic Academic

writings writings writings writings writings Total
from 1970 from 1981 from 1991 from 2001 from 2011 academic
Used in title Source to 1980 to 1990 to 2000 to 2010 to 2020 writings

Green Google 2 8 312 821 2750 3893

Marketing Scholar
Web of – – 23 59 192 274
Science Table 1.
Green Google – 5 47 81 377 510 Usage of the terms
Advertising Scholar green marketing and
Web of – – 12 4 97 113 green advertising in
Science academic writings
BIJ claims or green claims have been described as a fundamental concern for environmental
28,6 protection and a noninvasive way of life which prioritize the protection of the planet Earth,
personal health and animal life (Iyer and Banerjee, 1993). Definitions of green advertising by
various researchers are provided in Table 2.
While green advertising has garnered a great deal of interest among researchers, no
literature review on this topic has been found. Multiple literature reviews have been done on
the broad topics of green marketing, sustainability marketing and environmental marketing.
1936 Two literature reviews were found which focused on subaspects of green marketing. One was
a review of eco-labels (Gallastegui, 2002) and the other was a review of green consumerism
(Narula and Desore, 2016). Few of the literature review articles with their contributions in the
field of green marketing and sustainability are presented in Table 3. An overview of green
advertising trends during the 1988–2007 period was found (Leonidou et al., 2011). Thus, a
literature review on green advertising is unique and much needed in order to take a
comprehensive look at the body of work done on the topic especially in view of growing
sustainability concerns the world over.
In this review articles on green advertising from Web of Science Core Collection
were studied. A review of literature and bibliometric analysis were carried out using
tables, graphs and figures created in Microsoft Excel and VOSviewer. Publication
trends and research gaps were identified. The general flow followed in this paper is
the same as found in other review and bibliometric papers on similar topics (Kazemi
et al., 2019; Montanari et al., 2019; Punjani et al., 2019; Rocha et al., 2019; Nagariya et al.,
2020; Ramos et al., 2020). The methodology has been further outlined in the next
section.

3. Methodology
A five-step process of literature review as used by many prominent researchers was used
to select and analyze the articles (Seuring et al., 2005; Soni and Kodali, 2011; Dohale
et al., 2020).
Step 1. Rationale for selection of time period.
The articles are reviewed over a period of three decades (1990–2020). The review begins from
1990 as that is when the initial research studies on green advertising were found to be
published (Peattie, 1990; Gray, 1990). The year 2020 was considered as a terminating point as
the data was retrieved on June 30, 2020.

Sr. Name of
No Author/s Year Definition

1 Holder 1991 Advertising techniques used in large numbers to sell products that seem
to meet the demands of green consumerism, i.e. the use of individual
consumer preference to promote products and services that are less
harmful to the environment
2 Banerjee et al. 1995 Commercial (“paid for”) communication highlighting the company’s
environmentally friendly products, and/or services and attributes which
can be placed in various channels, such as company websites, print media
and television
Table 2. 3 Eren-Erdogmus 2016 Green advertising is one of the strategies that advertisers use to put their
Definition of green et al. goods in the minds of customers as green products
advertising by various 4 Kim et al. 2019 Green advertising influences individual mindsets toward advertising,
authors and the intention of consumers to be friendly to the environment
Author Contribution
Three decades
of green
Kilbourne and Beckmann Studies early research which provides a profile of the green consumer and advertising
(1998) environmental aspects of recycling, pollution control and energy conservation as
a part of marketing strategies
Gallastegui (2002) Gives an insight into the demand, supply and impact of eco-labels
Chamorro et al. (2009) Provides an understanding of the topics, methods and techniques used for
analysis among the database studied 1937
Connelly et al. (2011) Applies nine popular organizational theories to sustainable marketing strategies
to better understand best practices that emerge
Cronin et al. (2011) Helps to understand the strategies used by green firms keeping the stakeholder
theory in mind
Chabowski et al. (2011) Discusses three aspects of sustainability, namely, focus, emphasis and intent
which might be internal–external, social–environmental and legal–ethical,
respectively
Leonidou and Leonidou Identifies and consolidates literature across countries, industries, various topics
(2011) and research instruments
McDonagh and Prothero An empirical overview of the topic of sustainability marketing focusing on the
(2014) depth of the topics providing avenues for future sustainability research
Kumar (2016) Four themes of research are identified and studied – eco-orientation, green
marketing strategy, green marketing functions and green marketing
consequences Table 3.
Narula and Desore (2016) Provides insights into green consumer behavior related to perception, Literature reviews on
segmentation, positioning and factors affecting consumer’s willingness to pay for green marketing and
green products sustainability

Step 2. Rationale for selection of database.

The data were collected from Web of Science index maintained by Clarivate Analytics. Web
of Science index has data from 1.7 billion cited references covering over 155 million records
including 34,000 journals (Clarivate Analytics, 2020). Web of Science as a singular source of
information for bibliometric research have been used by researchers earlier who have made a
significant impact with their published works (Fetscherin and Usunier, 2012; Araujo et al.,
2018; Radler, 2018; Llanos-Herrera and Merigo, 2019).
Step 3. Rationale for search of articles.
An advanced search was conducted for the words “Green Advertising” in the default field of
topic, for articles and reviews, in English language from 1991 to 2020. A total of 113 such
articles and reviews were analyzed for this study. The rest were eliminated. They were
eliminated as they were book chapters, proceedings of papers and book reviews, not
published in the English language or were not relevant to the topic and had shown up in the
results just by chance.
Step 4. Literature review and analysis.
Detailed citation analysis reports were made on the data of 113 articles and reviews from
Web of Science using their online portal. A basic analysis of categories such as number of
publications per year, category of publications, top journals, countries, authors, universities,
industries covered and type of research tools used was done and tables generated in Microsoft
Excel (Version 16.14.1). For further analysis data was exported to VOSviewer Software
(Version 1.6.15 (0)) and figures were constructed to visualize data as well as draw inferences
from it regarding inter-relationships. The map which was constructed using VOSviewer
was distance-based. For distance-based bibliometric networks, the distance among two nodes
approximately indicates the degree of relationship between nodes (Van Eck and Waltman, 2014).
BIJ Step 5. Research gaps identified.
28,6 Based on the literature review and analysis research gaps were identified. These research
gaps present future research opportunities to researchers in the field of green advertising.

4. Bibliometric analysis
1938 4.1 Trend of publication year-wise
As indicated in Table 1, 113 articles were found on green advertising in Web of Science.
A further analysis represented in Figure 1 displays the year wise trend of publication of these
113 articles. This trend can also be due in part to a general increase in the number of
researchers and papers published on any topic each year. Maximum number of publications
are found in the year 2019. Also, it is expected that the actual figures for articles published in
2020 will end up being much higher by the time the year ends. It is to be noted that 57 out of
113 articles are published in the past five years (2015–2019). This indicates an increasing
trend in research on the topic of green advertising due to the fact that it is gaining in
importance globally.

4.2 Category of publication

On further analysis of these academic writings, it is observed that the subject area with the
maximum number of publications was Business with a result of 63, followed by
Communication with a result of 43. The subject areas of Environmental Studies and
Management are next with a result of 14 and 13, respectively, as shown in Table 4. The values
of the subject area wise results will not add up to 113 as some of the results appear in more
than one discipline.

4.3 Top journals

From the detailed citation analysis report generated through Web of Science useful
information was generated and analyzed. In simple language, a citation means a reference
where credit has been given by the researcher to the work done by the earlier researchers.
More the number of citations the work receives, more the importance of the work. The sum
total of all the citations received by the 113 articles and reviews were 2876. From Table 5, the

25

20
20

15 14

11 11
10
10 8 8
7
5
5 4 4
2
Figure 1. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Number of
publications per year 0
1997

2009

2012

2016

2019
1991
1993
1994
1995
1996

1998
2005
2008

2010
2011

2013
2014
2015

2017
2018

2020

on green advertising
Subject area Number of publications
Three decades
of green
Business 63 advertising
Communication 43
Environmental Studies 14
Management 13
Environmental Sciences 12
Green Sustainable Science Technology 12 1939
Engineering Environmental 8
Hospitality Leisure Sport Tourism 5
Economics 4
(Psychology) and (Sociology) 3 Table 4.
(Ethics) and (Law) and (Operations Research) 2 Subject area wise
(Multidisciplinary Sciences) and (Engineering Civil) and (Engineering Industrial) 1 publications on green
(Psychology Multidisciplinary) and (Religion) and (Transportation) 1 advertising

Sr. No Journal name Number of citations Number of articles

1 Journal of Advertising 1141 21

2 Journal of Business Research 684 4
3 International Journal of Advertising 202 6 Table 5.
4 Journal of Business Ethics 95 2 Top journals based on
5 Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics 73 2 number of citations for
5 International Marketing Review 73 1 green advertising

results for the journals which have the highest number of citations on this topic can be
observed. 40% of the 2876 citations have been received by one single journal, i.e. Journal of
Advertising on this topic. Other big contributors are Journal of Business Research and
International Journal of Advertising. These top six journals have received 79% of the total
citations on this topic.

4.4 Top authors

The authors who have contributed to the research in the field of green advertising is
displayed in Table 6. From this table, we can see that the maximum number of citations have
been received by Roberts J.A. Top 10 authors based on citations have been listed here.

Sr. no Author name Number of citations Number of articles Average citations per item

1 Roberts J.A. 557 1 557

2 Shrum L.J.
3 McCarty J.A.
4 Lowrey T.M.
5 Iyer E.
6 Hartmann P.
7 Banerjee S.
8 Gulas C.S.
9 Apaolaza Ibanez
10 Schuhwerk M.E.
10 Lefkoffhagius R.
256 1 256
256 1 256
256 1 256
199 2 99.5
177 6 29.5
149 1 149
149 1 149 Table 6.
146 3 48.67 Top authors based on
134 1 134 the number of citations
134 1 134 for green advertising
BIJ A simple calculation shows that 84% of the citations have been received by these top 10
28,6 authors. Thus, the work is highly concentrated among a handful of researchers. The highest
number (six) of articles have been published by Hartmann P.
A study of the h-index can also be done using Web of Science Analytics. The h index
measures the impact of a paper or group of papers. The findings of a study done by the
physicist who introduced h-index in 2005, J.Hirsch also reveal that h-index is a more reliable
measure than other metrics such as the total number of citations, citations per paper and the
1940 total number of articles for forecasting possible scientific achievements (Hirsch, 2007). A
researcher has an h-index of X, if he/she has at least X publications for which he/she has
received at least X citations (Hirsch, 2005). Here the h-index for the 113 items listed on Web of
Science is 26 which means that there are 26 papers out of 113 which have been cited 26
number of times.

4.5 Top universities

A study of the universities to which the research on green advertising has been presented in
Table 7. From this table it can be seen that maximum number of citations have been received
by the University of Massachusetts followed by the University System of Maryland and the
University of Basque Country. The h-index is the highest for the University of Basque
Country. 20% of the citations have been received by the top three universities. Note that three
out of the five universities listed here are from the USA, one from Spain and one from Austria.

4.6 Top countries

An analysis of the countries from which the majority of the research was done revealed that
the USA had maximum papers published with a figure of 49. China was the second largest
contributor though the number of papers was considerably lower with a figure of 12. These
results are captured by a TreeMap in Figure 2.
A further analysis of the citation data from Web of Science of the research papers
published from the USA revealed that papers from the USA were cited 1900 times. It was
found that 66% of the citations were received by papers published in the USA. Thus, the
research on this topic is highly concentrated in the USA. The h-index for these citations was
20 and average citations per item was 38.78. As compared to this the second highest
contributor China has received 128 citations, an h-index of 6 and an average citation per item
of 10.67. Spain while ranking third in number of contributions had a higher citation count.
Total citations which have been received by Spain were 190, with an h-index of 6 and an
average citation per item of 21.11. Total citations which have been received by Taiwan were
185 with h-index of 6 and an average citation per item of 20.56. India which also ranks third in

Sr. Number of Number of Average citations

no Name of the University citations articles h-index per item

1 University of 279 4 4 69.75

Massachusetts
2 University System of 202 4 3 50.5
Maryland
3 University of Basque 177 6 5 29.5
Table 7. Country
Top universities based 4 University System of 135 5 4 27
on number of citations Georgia
for green advertising 5 University of Vienna 124 4 4 31
 Three decades
of green
advertising

1941

Figure 2.
TreeMap of 10
countries with highest
number of articles on
green advertising

the number of contributions falls behind on the citation scores. India received 27 citations, an
h-index of 3 and average citation per item of 3 for green advertising.

4.7 Most cited articles

The 10 most cited articles on green advertising can be identified from Table 8. The most cited
article is “Green consumers in the 1990s: profile and implications for advertising” written by
Roberts J.A. and published in the Journal of Business Research in 1996 with 557 citations. The
top 10 most cited articles have received 55% of the citations. The remaining 103 articles have
received a total of 45% of the citations. Thus, the work done on green advertising is highly
concentrated among a few authors, a few countries and universities and has a relatively low
citation rate as far as literature is concerned.

4.8 Keyword analysis

After the above analysis of data such as authors, citation, organization, region/country,
journal/source, etc. for higher level of analysis, the data were exported into VOSviewer
Software (Version 1.6.15 (0)). Keyword maps, cocitation maps, coupling, etc. were created to
get insights. The software helped visualize the data better. Since the early days of
bibliometric study, the concept of visualizing bibliometric networks, also called “science
mapping” has received significant attention (Van Eck and Waltman, 2014). The result of
keyword analysis done on VOSviewer is displayed in Figure 3. A counting method was used
that considered a minimum of eight occurrences and 25 most relevant words were shortlisted.
The results indicate three clusters of words which occur together indicated by color coding.
The scale of the word indicates the frequency of its occurrence. The following were the most
repeated words in each cluster:
(1) Cluster 1 – behavior, impact, relationship and purchase intention;
(2) Cluster 2 – appeal, message, image and effectiveness;
(3) Cluster 3 – design methodology approach, green advertisement, practical implication
and advertiser.
It can be concluded that articles in the first cluster are related more to consumer behavior,
articles in cluster two pertain more to advertising and articles in cluster three pertain to
empirical marketing strategies. It can also be inferred from the results that more research has
BIJ Publication Total Average
28,6 Sr.No Title Authors Journal name year citations per year

1 Green consumers in Roberts J.A. Journal of 1996 557 22.28

the 1990s Profile Business
and implications for Research
advertising
1942 2 Buyer Shrum L.J., Journal of 1995 256 9.85
characteristics of McCarty J.A., Advertising
the green consumer Lowrey T.M.
and their
implications for
advertising strategy
3 Shades of Green-A Banerjee S., Gulas Journal of 1995 149 5.73
multidimensional C.S., Iyer E Advertising
analysis of
environmental
advertising
4 Green or non green- Schuhwerk M.E., Journal of 1995 134 5.15
Does the type of Lefkoffhagius R Advertising
appeal matter when
advertising a green
product
5 Feeling ambivalent Chang, Chingching Journal of 2011 93 9.3
about going green- Advertising
implications for
Green Advertising
Processing
6 Perceived Nyilasy, Gergely. Journal of 2014 90 12.86
Greenwashing: The Gangadharbatla, Business
Interactive Effects Harsha; Paladino, Ethics
of Green Angela
Advertising and
Corporate
Environmental
Performance on
Consumer
Reactions
7 Green advertising Hartmann, Patrick; International 2009 80 6.67
revisited Apaolaza-Ibanez, Journal of
Conditioning virtual Vanessa Advertising
nature experiences
8 Green advertising Zinkhan GM., Journal of 1995 79 3.04
and the reluctant Carlson L Advertising
consumer
9 Evaluating the Leonidou, Leonidas International 2011 73 7.3
green advertising C., leonidou, Marketing
practices of Constantinos N.; Review
international firms: Palihawadana,
a trend analysis Dayananda;
Hultman, Magnus
Table 8. 10 Green advertising D’Soura, Clare; Asia Pacific 2005 66 4.13
Number of citations effects on attitude Taghian, Mehdi Journal of
and most cited articles and choice of Marketing
for green advertising advertising themes and Logistics
 Three decades
of green
advertising

1943

Figure 3.
Bibliographic data.
Map of co-occurrence
analysis based on
keywords

been done on consumer behavior topics falling under cluster one compared to the other two
categories.

4.9 Cocitation analysis based on authors

In order to analyze the data further a cocitation analysis was done using cited authors from
the 113 articles under review. It showed three clusters of authors who have been cited
together as shown in Figure 4. The data from both Figure 4 and Table 6 indicate mostly the
same set of major contributors to the field of green advertising.

4.10 Cocitation analysis based on journals

Another cocitation analysis was done on the basis of cited sources. The results are captured
in Figure 5. It shows the clustering of the sources, i.e. the journals in which these cocitations
have occurred. The journals are divided into four clusters. Cluster 1 being related to
Consumer Behavior Research, Cluster 2 being related to Psychology and Environment,
Cluster 3 being related to Advertising and Cluster 4 being related to Business and
Marketing. The source with maximum number of cocitations was found to be Journal of
Advertising as was also indicated earlier in Table 5. The second-most prominent is the
Journal of Consumer Research closely followed by both Journal of Marketing and Journal of
Business Research. The cluster with maximum number of cited sources was Cluster 1 which
covered topics of Consumer Behavior. A similar trend was indicated by the keyword
analysis in Figure 3.

4.11 Thematic classification

On the basis of the bibliometric analysis and reading of the articles, the main subtopics of
green advertising were identified. The subtopics with the corresponding authors and year of
publication have been presented in Table 9.
BIJ
28,6

1944

Figure 4.
Bibliographic data.
Map of cocitation
analysis based on
authors

Figure 5.
Bibliographic data.
Map of cocitation
analysis based on
journals
Subtopic
Consumer behavior
Content of advertising claims
and appeals
Corporate advertising
Eco seals and regulations
Effectiveness studies
Empirical studies and reviews
Greenwashing and skepticism
Pricing
Strategy
Author
Three decades
of green
Shrum et al. (1995), Roberts (1996), D’Souza and Taghian (2005), advertising
Khandelwal and Bajpai (2011), Fowler and Close (2012), Kong and Zhang
(2013), Atkinson (2014), Wong et al. (2014), Martinez-Fiestas et al. (2015),
Ryan (2015), Bailey et al. (2016), Fernando et al. (2016), Hartmann et al.
(2016), Kim et al. (2016), Muralidharan and Sheehan (2016), Kim and Yoon
(2017), Wei et al. (2017), Bailey et al. (2018), Gaither and Sinclair (2018), Mo 1945
et al. (2018), Parker et al. (2018), Schmuck et al. (2018a, b), Song and Kim
(2018), do Paco et al. (2019), Grolleau et al. (2019), He et al. (2019), Sabharwal
(2019), Song, So and Kim (2019), Martinez-Fiestas et al. (2020)
Banerjee et al. (1995), Schuhwerk and Lefkoffhagius (1995), Buckley and
Araujo (1997), Manrai et al. (1997), Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ibanez (2009),
Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ibanez (2010), Chang (2011), Testa et al. (2011),
Alniacik and Yilmaz (2012), Chang (2012), Kareklas et al. (2012), Ryan
(2012), Spack et al. (2012), Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ibanez (2013), Tu et al.
(2013), Sabre (2014), Green and Peloza (2014), Hartmann et al. (2014),
Matthes et al. (2014), Chang et al. (2015), Lloyd et al. (2015), Pudaruth et al.
(2015), Xue (2015), Yang et al. (2015), Chen and Chiu (2016), Reich and Soule
(2016), Barrios et al. (2017), Kumar (2017), Muralidharan et al. (2017), Ganz
and Grimes (2018), Kim et al. (2019), Kumar and Tripathi (2019), Sarkar et al.
(2019), Shin and Ki (2019), Song and Luximon (2019), Tu et al. (2019), Usrey
et al. (2019), J€ager and Weber (2020), Kao and Du (2020), Sahin et al. (2020)
Smith et al. (2014), Amato et al. (2015), Hartmann et al. (2017)
Holder (1991), Church (1994), Bickart and Ruth (2012), Nunez Cansado and
Rodrigo Martin (2015), De Chiara (2016)
Jimenez and Yang (2008), Xue (2014), Bodkin et al. (2015), Li et al. (2019)
Iyer and Banerjee (1993), Kilbourne (1995), Leonidou et al. (2011), Prasad
et al. (2017)
Zinkhan and Carlson (1995), Chang (2011), Finisterra do Paco and Reis
(2012), Plec and Pettenger (2012), Xie and Kronrod (2012), Budinsky and
Bryant (2013), Leonidou et al. (2014), Matthes and Wonneberger (2014),
Nyilasy et al. (2014), Atkinson and Kim (2015), Chen (2016), Segev et al.
(2016), Schmuck et al. (2018a, b), Jones (2019), Kopnina (2019), Silva et al.
(2019), Cheng et al. (2020), Luo et al. (2020), Martinez et al. (2020)
Royne et al. (2012), Lee (2014), Liu and Yi (2017), Shen et al. (2019) Table 9.
Carlson et al. (1996), De Giovanni (2014), Du et al. (2019), Schuller and Thematic classification
Doubravsky (2019), Maziriri (2020) of green advertising

The subtopics have been explained in brief as follows –

Consumer behavior – Researchers have studied how profiles of green consumers can be
constructed (Shrum et al., 1995; Roberts, 1996), the difference between what consumers say
and what they do which is referred to as the “green gap” (Wong et al., 2014), factors which act
as moderators; affecting purchase of green products (Pudaruth et al., 2015), consumer
motivation (Muralidharan and Sheehan, 2016) and consumer perception (Mo et al., 2018).
Content of advertising claims and appeals – Maximum research was found to be done on
this topic. It included studies of types of appeals (Green and Peloza, 2014; Matthes et al., 2014;
Jaeger and Weber, 2020), celebrity endorsements in green advertising (He et al., 2019) and use
of text, color and visuals in green advertisements (Spack et al., 2012; Song and Luximon, 2019;
Martinez et al., 2020).
Corporate advertising – The least amount of research was found on this topic. Studies were
found on framing and evaluating environmental claims made by companies (Amato et al.,
2015), public perception and corporate social responsibility (Smith et al., 2014) and message
strategy for corporate advertising (Hartmann et al., 2017).
BIJ Eco seals and regulations – Articles included studies on persuasive nature of eco seals
28,6 (Bickart and Ruth, 2012; De Chiara, 2016), green advertising regulations in the automobile
section (Holder, 1991; Nunez Cansado and Rodrigo Martin, 2015) and legal aspects of green
advertising regulations (Church, 1994).
Effectiveness studies – These are articles which studied the overall effectiveness of green
advertising (Jimenez and Yang, 2008; Xue, 2014), effectiveness during corporate disasters
(Bodkin et al., 2015) and relationship between green advertising expenditure and sales (Li
1946 et al., 2019).
Empirical studies and reviews – These studies were exploratory in nature. Their aim was to
introduce the reader to the concept of green advertising in a general context (Iyer and
Banerjee, 1993; Kilbourne, 1995), in context of a particular country (Prasad et al., 2017) or in
the context of international firms (Leionidou et al., 2011).
Green washing and skepticism – Another popular topic of research was green washing and
skepticism which covered skepticism across countries (Silva et al., 2019), skepticism across
different media including social media (Luo et al., 2020), skepticism in industrial markets
(Leonidou et al., 2014), factors affecting skepticism (Finisterra do Paco and Reis, 2012) and
effects of false claims in green advertising (Schmuck et al., 2018a, b; Jones, 2019).
Pricing – The research on pricing in green advertising extends to include use of price as
heuristic (Royne et al., 2012), penetration and skimming price strategy of green products (Lee,
2014) and sequence of price setting of green and nongreen products (Shen et al., 2019).
Strategy – These research studies indicate overall link of green advertising to other
strategies. There are articles on how green advertising follows the strategy of integrated
marketing communication (Carlson et al., 1996), operations and green advertising (De
Giovanni, 2014), platform led green advertising (Du et al., 2019), choice of media mix strategy
(Schuller and Doubravsky, 2019) and business strategy and green advertising as means for
gaining a competitive edge (Maziriri, 2020).
The review of green advertising also reveals that majority of the researchers have used
content analysis of print advertisements as the methodology (Banerjee et al., 1995; Testa et al.,
2011; Segev et al., 2016; Kumar, 2017). Many have used experimental design to establish cause
and effect (Chang, 2011; Royne et al., 2012; Ganz and Grimes, 2018). Few have used the survey
method with questionnaires (Xie and Kronrod, 2012; Pudaruth et al., 2015). The product
category in which the research is done includes automobiles (Xie and Kronrod, 2012; Shin and
Ki, 2019), household cleaning agents (Ryan, 2012; Matthes et al., 2014), hospitality and
tourism (Sahin et al., 2020), energy (Kumar and Tripathi, 2019), durables (Fernando et al.,
2016) and food items (Jaeger and Weber, 2020).

5. Discussion
Apart from the systematic review of literature, this paper adopts a two-pronged approach to
bibliometrics – one being the tabular presentation and analysis and one being the scientific
mapping method using VOSviewer visualization maps. The results of both are indicative of
the same conclusions. The main contributors are a handful of authors. The top 10 authors
have received 84% of the citations on the subject. The maximum citations were received by
Roberts J.A. for his article titled “Green consumers in the 1990s: Profile and implications for
advertising”. The article was path breaking as it gave an insight into the changing profile of
environmentally conscious consumers. The profiling included ascertaining the size of the
market, their attitudes and demographics. The maximum number of articles were written by
Hartmann P. The subtopics covered by him covered a vast range from advertising appeals,
visuals of advertisements, consumer psychology to corporate advertising. His papers were
usually coauthored with Apaolaza Ibanez who also features in the list of top 10 authors.
 The findings also indicate that maximum number of articles were published by the Three decades
Journal of Advertising. The top six journals received 79% of the total citations and top 10 of green
articles received 55% of the total citations. 66% of the citations have been received for works
published in the USA. Thus, the work done on the topic till date is very concentrated to a
advertising
handful of countries, publications and authors.
Based on the review of literature nine subthemes were identified. The classification of
research papers into these nine themes leads us to conclude that advertising appeals/claims,
consumer behavior and skepticism are the most widely researched. 1947
5.1 Theoretical implications
This is the first study of its kind which offers an analysis of research done on green
advertising. In addition to a statistical overview using citations, number of publications and
h-index, it also provides a thematic classification of the topics covered and outlines six gaps
for future research. Much of the research studies done in this area has originated from the
Unites States indicating the enormous potential of this topic to be researched from other
nations. Similarly, given the potential of green advertising, more publications could include
this topic in their scope especially from nonmanagement areas like law, leisure, tourism,
sports and even technology. With more awareness created around green advertising as a
topic, it could motivate more researchers to conduct studies on this topic. A natural corollary
of the above would be that an increasing number of universities start promoting the studies
on this topic. A few institutes conducting programs in advertising could think of offering
green advertising as an elective course. Given the above reasons and the statistics quoted in
this paper, it is expected that in the days to come green advertising would increasingly attract
the attention of researchers globally. Increased research on the topic in turn would enable to
shape the public policy on the same.

5.2 Managerial implications

The body of work done indicates that green advertising has come of age. It is not something that
can be ignored anymore by saying that traditional advertising which has worked for the past
four decades will work in the future as well (Whelan and Kronthal-Sacco, 2019). Also, the
research is clearly indicative that green advertising is specialized in nature. The same caveats
which work for conventional advertising might not work for green advertising. There is a need
to develop a whole new set of best practices which work for the specific area of green advertising.
Thus, managers need to add green advertising to their toolkit. The maximum research studies
on green advertising have emanated from the areas of business and communication which
indicates the importance of this topic from a managerial perspective. As per the keyword
analysis undertaken in this study, every cluster reveals a keyword which has a managerial
implication. Cluster 1 reveals purchase intention, Cluster 2 indicates appeal and Cluster 3 reveals
practical implications as keywords which occur frequently. This clearly brings out the fact the
studies conducted on green advertising had a high degree of managerial implications. Given its
growing importance, green advertising could affect the advertising field as consumers could, in
the days to come, subtly indicate that green should be a part of the advertising and in turn
affecting the advertising industry itself. The advertising industry should therefore focus on
equipping itself to handle more of green advertising in the days to come. On the other hand, the
societal impact of green advertising would serve to increase the environmental consciousness of
the customers and in turn impacting the quality of life of the citizens.

6. Future research directions and conclusion

Based on the review of literature the following six core research gaps were identified:
The first and most glaring research gap is the ambiguity surrounding green advertising
regulations. Some research has been found on eco-labeling and some on green advertising
BIJ regulations in the automobile sector. Yet, this does not provide an empirical view of how
28,6 the green advertising claims are regulated to protect the interests of both consumers and
advertisers from those who make false green claims. Developed countries were found to
have environmental advertising-related regulatory bodies as compared to their
developing counterparts (Prasad et al., 2017). There is enough research done on the
topic of skepticism, greenwashing and misleading claims that these aspects are a part of
green advertising today. There is a need to establish and empower a third-party watchdog.
1948 Thus, there is immense scope for conducting research on the regulatory aspect of green
advertising.
The second research gap identified is the concentrated nature of research which leaves
green advertising from many parts of the world under-researched. Since green
advertising is showing an increasing trend in popularity and usage, the research
outside the USA could also be an opportunity for future researchers. Apart from these
other journals including journals from nonmanagement streams such as law and
hospitality also present an opportunity to publish research on green advertising and its
allied subtopics. The legal journals could focus on the regulatory and rules aspects of
green advertising. The tourism and hospitality industry extensively use the imagery of
green offerings. Thus, the tourism and leisure journals could include green advertising in
their publishing scope.
The third research gap identified is a dearth of material on green branding. Green
advertising helps build brands. Thus, topics under branding such as celebrity endorsements,
brand personality studies and identification of green unique selling propositions can be
studied. Theories and models of branding such as brand resonance model and its application
to green advertising can be interlinked and further researched upon.
The fourth research gap is stemming from the methodology used for green advertising
research so far. Content analysis of print advertisements and experimental design were found
to be the most frequently used in research. With the increasing usage of social media and
online advertisements, a content analysis of green advertising on such digital media offers
great scope for future studies.
The fifth research gap identified is pertaining to advertising appeals. Though it was found
to be the most researched subtopic, not all the advertising appeals were studied. The existing
research works studied fear appeals. Further research could reveal interrelationships
between green behavior and use of other appeals such as slice of life, humor, animation or
music to convey the green message.
The sixth and last research gap identified is to expand the breadth of green advertising
product categories. Currently the research is focused on automobile, household cleaning
agents, food, durables and energy companies. Future researchers could study the use of green
advertising to promote nondurable goods, apparels, services or in business-to-business
marketing situations.
This study provides a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of three decades of
academic research that has been done on the topic of green advertising and the gaps in
research which offer scope for further research. This study analyzed data from Web of
Science. Analysis of data from another source may indicate different results. The tables and
graphs are generated from the database except for the thematic classification. Thus, the
thematic classification is subjective and based on past literature. The results of the study
indicate that in spite of the significant studies published and the increasing prominence of the
sustainability of brands, the work on green advertising is highly concentrated in a few
geographies, journals, universities and researchers and therefore there is great scope for
further research in this area.
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BIJ About the authors
Neha Dhruv Agarwal is a Research Scholar with Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune,
28,6 India, and an Assistant Professor at Indira School of Business Studies, Pune, India. She has 10 years of
experience in industry and academic sectors. Her research interest areas are advertising, consumer
behavior and sustainability.
Dr V.V. Ravi Kumar is Professor at Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune, Symbiosis
International (Deemed University), Pune, India. He has over 23 years of experience across the corporate
1958 and academic sectors. He has contributed to several research papers in the area of Services Marketing –
Mobile Banking, Internet Banking, Innovation, Advertising and Branding related to Services. V.V. Ravi
Kumar is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: chalamravi@gmail.com

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