DOI: 10.11118/ecos2026_024

GREENWASHING IN THE MARKETING COMMUNICATION OF SUSTAINABLE FASHION COMPANIES: THE ATTITUDES OF GENERATION Y AND Z

Gabriela Navrátilová¹, Veronika Antošová¹, Lucie Veselá¹

¹ Department of Marketing and Trade, Faculty of Business and Economics, Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 1, 613 00 Brno, Czech Republic

The paper deals with the perception of the credibility of environmental claims of fash-ion brands among Czech consumers of generation Y and Z and the possibilities of communication that minimizes the risk of greenwashing. The aim is to identify the key factors influencing the purchasing behaviour of these generations in the sustainable fashion market and to describe their attitudes towards the credibility of sustainability marketing messages. A combination of situational analysis of secondary data and a primary questionnaire survey in the period March–April 2024 is used. The sample con-sists of 368 respondents born between 1980 and 2010 selected according to their age. Dependencies are tested by Pearson’s chi-square independence test at a significance level of 5%, the intensity of association is measured by Cramér’s V. It was found that 68% of respondents are more likely to distrust marketing claims about the sustainabil-ity of fashion brands, and 65.5% say they would not buy from a brand convicted of greenwashing. Confidence in environmental claims is not statistically dependent on the age of the respondent or the frequency of purchases of slow fashion, but it is weakly but statistically significantly dependent on the knowledge of the concept of greenwash-ing and on the frequency of its feeling when buying clothes. Transparent communica-tion about the origin of materials and production processes increases consumer trust for 58.7% of respondents. The results support the conclusion that greenwashing risk reduction is based primarily on the transparency, authenticity and traceability of the message, not on the intensity of the communication itself.

Keywords: greenwashing, sustainable fashion, slow fashion, marketing communication, generation y, generation z, consumer trust, transparency

pages: 232-241, online: 2026