Greenwashing vs. Genuine Sustainability: A Systematic Review of Digital Advertising and Consumer Perception

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate on sustainability communication in the digital environment due to greenwashing and issues of legitimacy in environmental communications. In this regard, this paper aims to investigate the perception of audience of sustainability against greenwashing through social media platforms. It analyzes recent research related to sustainability communications from 2016 to 2025 and evaluates the effect of social media platforms, influencer marketing, visual communication, digital literacy, and social norms on sustainability communications. It highlights the significant role of influencer credibility, visual elements, engagement metrics, and algorithmic amplification in the audience perceptions, thereby making it hard to determine what is real sustainability communication and what is merely an environmental PR stunt. At the same time, there are substantial research gaps especially in terms of audience-based detection mechanisms in less developed nations.

 Keywords: Greenwashing, Sustainability Communication, Social Media, Influencer Marketing, Audience Perception.