Communicated and attributed motives for sustainability initiatives in the energy industry: The role of regulatory compliance

Environmental regulations can significantly impact the extent to which companies in the energy industry implement sustainable practices. Nevertheless, little is known how consumers respond to companies that openly acknowledge this motivation. The current study focused on the effects of communicating a combination of environmental and non-environmental motives for investing in sustainability initiatives on consumer attributions. It was tested whether the acknowledgment of legal motives would differently affect attributions than the acknowledgment of financial motives in messages in which environmental motives were also expressed. An experiment was conducted using a 2 (legal motive: absent vs. present) by 2 (financial motive: absent vs. present) design. Results showed that acknowledging a legal or a financial motive both reduced intrinsic attributions for the sustainability initiatives. However, only the acknowledgment of a financial motive increased extrinsic attributions. These findings suggest that communicating regulatory compliance motivations for implementing a sustainability initiative has fewer negative implications for the perceived sincerity of the company than communicating corporate benefits.

current study focused on the effects of communicating a combination of environmental and non-environmental motives for investing in sustainability initiatives on consumer attributions. It was tested whether the acknowledgment of legal motives would differently affect attributions than the acknowledgment of financial motives in messages in which environmental motives were also expressed. An experiment was conducted using a 2 (legal motive: absent vs. present) by 2 (financial motive: absent vs. present) design. Results showed that acknowledging a legal or a financial motive both reduced intrinsic attributions for the sustainability initiatives. However, only the acknowledgment of a financial motive increased extrinsic attributions. These findings suggest that communicating regulatory compliance motivations for implementing a sustainability initiative has fewer negative implications for the perceived sincerity of the company than communicating corporate benefits.

| INTRODUCTION
Environmental regulations represent a key factor for the energy industry to implement sustainable practices in their supply chain (Ahmad, Rezaei, Sadaghiani, & Tavasszy, 2017). Because of the urgency to structurally transform energy systems in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change, environmental regulations play a prominent role on the political agenda (United Nations, n.d.). As such, it is likely that energy companies will experience increased pressure to conform to environmental regulations in the future (Escobar & Vredenburg, 2011;Nidumolu, Prahalad, & Rangaswami, 2009). However, research has shown that companies tend to present their sustainability initiatives to consumers as a discretionary effort and as an ethical responsibility, even in contexts where the environmental issues that are addressed are explicitly governed by regulation (O'Connor & Shumate, 2010). Thus, although it can be expected that at least a part of the implemented sustainable practices has resulted from regulatory compliance (Babiak & Trendafilova, 2011), it is uncommon for companies to acknowledge this in their communication to consumers.
Consumers can be suspicious of the corporate intentions behind investments in sustainability, and are concerned that companies primarily strive for their own gain (Connors, Anderson-MacDonald, & Thomson, 2017;Skarmeas & Leonidou, 2013). This suspicion tends to be more pronounced for companies operating in the energy industry, as this industry is perceived as being responsible for causing environmental damage (Gueterbock, 2006;Miller & Lellis, 2015). As such, the environmental motives for sustainable investments that are commonly expressed by energy companies-in which their concern for the effects of environmental problems (e.g., climate change, resource depletion, pollution) on the planet is presented as the main reason for their investments-might not necessarily align with the attributions of sincerity that people make when they are exposed to such messages.
Previous research has examined whether acknowledging a combination of both environmental and financial motives-in which a company describes the financial rewards (e.g., cost reduction, competitive advantage) it expects to gain by investing in sustainability-in the promotion of sustainability initiatives could alter people's skepticism about the real intentions of a company (Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010;Forehand & Grier, 2003). However, this research has neglected the role of regulatory compliance as a motivation to implement sustainability initiatives (De Vries, Terwel, Ellemers, & Daamen, 2015), even though pursuing financial goals within the boundaries of legislation is a basic requirement for companies to gain a license to operate (Carroll, 1991;Erskine & Collins, 1996).
The current research aims to address this gap by examining which attributions are made by consumers when companies explicitly state that they are legally obliged to implement sustainable procedures.
Specifically, we test how the acknowledgement of environmental motives in combination with financial or legal motives in the promotion of sustainable initiatives in the energy industry can affect consumer attributions of corporate sincerity. We will focus on oil companies, as these companies represent a particularly stigmatized part of the energy industry due to their association with environmental pollution, which in turn increases the challenge for these companies to effectively communicate about sustainability activities.

| Legitimacy through environmental disclosure
One of the primary goals that were set in the Paris Agreement is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% in 2030 compared to 1990 levels (European Commission, n.d.). The energy industry plays a key role in the achievement of this goal, as it requires the current energy system to transform to a system that is based on renewable energy sources (Pickl, 2019;Raszewski, 2018). The current reliance on fossil fuels promotes a range of detrimental environmental impacts (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018). This reliance on fossil fuels is especially apparent in the oil industry. As a consequence, the legitimacy of oil companies tends to be questioned regularly by various stakeholders (Du & Vieira, 2012). Legitimacy can be defined as "a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions" (Suchmann, 1995, p. 574). It represents a crucial resource for companies, as it impacts both stakeholders' support for the organization as well as their subsequent willingness to supply the resources on which a company depends (Maignan & Ferrell, 2004).
The great level of scrutiny that the oil industry is under can lead to a stronger tendency to disclose corporate environmental performance information (Lyon & Montgomery, 2013;Reid & Toffel, 2009).
Considering the low environmental legitimacy that oil companies have, the promotion of sustainability initiatives can help to increase the corporate legitimacy, while these companies have little to lose when negative environmental information is disclosed. In contrast, when companies have already established a high level of environmental legitimacy, communicating a commitment to protecting the environment can lead to higher risks to-for example-stock prices, as any negative information about their environmental performance might reduce legitimacy (Bansal & Clelland, 2004). Various studies have indeed revealed that oil companies tend to be open in their communication about their environmental impacts (Patten, 1992). For example, a study by Du and Vieira (2012) focused on which corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategies were adopted by oil companies in order to gain legitimacy. Their findings showed that the six oil companies that were examined all prominently disclosed their environmental sustainability initiatives on their websites. Thus, it is important for oil companies to communicate about their actions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, as it demonstrates how they adhere to societal norms.

| Attributed corporate motives
Despite the efforts of oil companies to disclose their sustainability activities, it nevertheless remains challenging to promote positive consumer responses to this disclosure due to the poor environmental reputation of the industry. Such consumer skepticism can be explained by the attribution theory (Kelley, 1967). This theory focuses on the process in which people attribute causes to behavior and events, and how these attributions can influence their subsequent attitudes and behavior. Developing a causal judgment can support the human desire to understand social contexts (Kelley & Michela, 1980). People tend to distinguish between attributions to intrinsic and extrinsic causes. In a sustainability context, intrinsic attributions refer to the belief that companies invest in sustainability initiatives due to dispositional factors, such as corporate concern for the environment or because it aligns with a company's moral values (Romani, Grappi, & Bagozzi, 2016). Thus, intrinsic attributions relate to the sincerity and genuineness of the corporate intentions behind the sustainability initiative. Such attributions tend to be used by consumers to assess whether the initiative is authentic-in the sense that the initiative is what it appears to be (De Vries et al., 2015;Parguel, Benoît-Moreau, & Larceneux, 2011; see also Ewing, Allen, & Ewing, 2012;Guèvremont, 2018;Trilling, 1972).
In contrast, extrinsic attributions relate to consumer beliefs that situational causes drive corporate decisions to invest in sustainability (Romani et al., 2016). For example, sustainability initiatives can be implemented for instrumental reasons that contribute to the company's success. As such, when extrinsic attributions are made, the sustainability initiative tends to be perceived as self-serving (Parguel et al., 2011). People are inclined to infer that dispositional factors drive observed behavior when no situational, alternative causes are salient (Gilbert & Malone, 1995;Ross, 1977). However, adopting business practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the energy industry can serve various strategical goals, as these practices might contribute to a company's long-term survival. When such situational causes are apparent, extrinsic attributions are more likely to be made (Kelley & Michela, 1980). In addition, although corporate prosocial values are considered as important in ethical consumer decision making (Shaw, Grehan, Shiu, Hassan, & Thomson, 2005), consumers tend to perceive prosocial marketing actions as company-focused and manipulative, and are therefore inclined to question the sincerity of corporate motives (Heath & Chatzidakis, 2012;Luo, Sun, Shen, & Xia, 2020).
Whether consumers attribute corporate motives to be intrinsic or In contrast to intrinsic attributions, extrinsic attributions can result in negative consequences. In the current research, we will distinguish between two forms of extrinsic attributions (see Table 1 for an overview of communicated and attributed motives): Strategic attributions-in which a company is perceived to pursue instrumental business goals such as increasing profits and improving the corporate image, and egoistic attributions-in which a company takes advantage of or exploits environmental issues to help the company. Previous research has indicated that consumers perceive strategic and egoistic attributions as two separate constructs, and these attributions can promote different consumer responses (Ellen, Webb, & Mohr, 2006).
The pursuit of strategic goals is fundamental for the survival of an organization and tends to be accepted by stakeholders, while the pursuit of egoistic goals tends to be disapproved. Indeed, egoistic attributions have been shown to be detrimental in corporate sustainability communication and can reduce trust in the company (Skarmeas & Leonidou, 2013;Vlachos et al., 2009). When stakeholders believe that the company is more interested in exploiting environmental issues for its own gain rather than reducing its negative environmental impact, this can result in the withdrawal of stakeholder resources through, for example, boycotting products and services of the company (Polonsky & Rosenberger, 2001).
Findings on the effects of strategic attributions tend to be more mixed. For example, consumer skepticism about CSR has been shown not to be influenced by strategic attributions (Skarmeas & Leonidou, 2013). Furthermore, strategic behaviors tend to be accepted as an inherent aspect of business practices and have been linked to higher purchase intentions (Ellen et al., 2006). Nevertheless, strategic attributions have mostly been shown to promote negative outcomes, such as an increase in perceived greenwashing (i.e., more resources are invested in advertising a "green" corporate image than in actual sustainable business practices) and a decrease in patronage intentions (De Vries et al., 2015;Vlachos et al., 2009).

| Public-versus firm-serving motives
There is a growing interest in the role of communicated corporate motives for implementing sustainability initiatives in the attributions that consumers make. Research has indicated that people respond more positively to corporate sustainability messages when a motive for the sustainability initiative is communicated (Van Prooijen, 2019).
One of the key questions that arises is whether companies should accentuate intrinsic motives, or whether the business case for sustainability should be emphasized (Du et al., 2010). The selected motives that a company integrates in its sustainability communication can reduce consumer skepticism (Forehand & Grier, 2003), and therefore represents an important aspect of corporate sustainability messages.
In general, two overarching categories of corporate motives to invest in (environmental) CSR initiatives tend to be distinguished: Public-serving motives-which are focused on collective benefits and the wellbeing of individuals external to the company (such as environmental motives), and firm-serving motives-which are focused on the benefits to and the needs of the company itself (such as financial motives; De Vries et al., 2015;Forehand & Grier, 2003). As an example, in the context of sustainability, public-serving (environmental) motives might be communicated by expressing concern about the detrimental consequences of greenhouse gas emissions for human societies and the natural environment, and how the implemented sustainability initiative can help to mitigate these consequences. Thus,

Environmental
It is concerned about the environment and thereby aims to achieve public-serving, collective goals Financial It wants to gain financial benefits and thereby aims to achieve firm-serving goals Legal It is legally obliged to do so

Attributed motives
Type Corporate motives behind sustainability are attributed by people to be driven by…

Intrinsic
Sincere concern for environmental problems to evoke concern about potential risks for the public's wellbeing (Upham & Roberts, 2011). Consequently, it is more effective to acknowledge a financial motive rather than an environmental motive (Forehand & Grier, 2003).
However, other research has demonstrated that public trust in wind power initiatives was only determined by the expression of environmental motives, whereas the acknowledgment of financial motives did not influence the results ( Van Prooijen, 2019). Public acceptance and the positivity of associations both tend to be high for wind power (Truelove, 2012;Visschers & Siegrist, 2014). As such, communication about wind power is unlikely to raise suspicion, which reduces the need to acknowledge a financial motive. Thus, these findings indicate that suspicion is also determined by the initiatives that are implemented, rather than just the industry in which a company operates.
Research by Terwel et al. (2009)  Nevertheless, it appears to be common for oil companies to mostly integrate public-serving motives for sustainability initiatives in an attempt to increase their credibility (Du & Vieira, 2012). It is therefore unlikely that organizational sustainability communication by these companies will focus solely on financial or legal motives, as environmental disclosure aims to show how a company adheres to societal norms. Moreover, given that adding a nonenvironmental motive to a message can change the effect of communicated environmental motives (Terwel et al., 2009), we examined the effects of financial and legal motives for sustainability in a corporate message in which environmental motives were also included. It is likely that the acknowledgment of legal motives will differently affect intrinsic, strategic, or egoistic attributions than the acknowledgment of financial motives. The decision to invest in sustainability initiatives on account of conforming to legislation can be seen as an involuntary action (Coombs & Holladay, 2012). In this context, corporate motives can appear to be limited to feelings of legal obligation rather than sincere concern for environmental problems.

| Acknowledging financial versus legal motives
Consequently, acknowledging both environmental and legal motives should lead to a decrease in perceived intrinsic motives, as the sincerity of the environmental motive is contradicted by the legal motive.
However, legal motives are unlikely to be associated with the promotion of a positive corporate image, as the sustainability initiative is framed as a complying action aimed to avoid legal problems rather than a strategy to pursue corporate gain. In contrast, financial motives are explicitly related to increasing corporate benefits. The acknowledgement of both environmental and financial motives should therefore not only lower intrinsic attributions, but it should also increase strategic and egoistic attributions. We therefore hypothesize that: H1 Acknowledging a legal motive for corporate sustainability initiatives will reduce intrinsic attributions, but it will not affect strategic and egoistic attributions.
H2 Acknowledging a financial motive for corporate sustainability initiatives will reduce intrinsic attributions, while it will increase strategic and egoistic attributions. Although our hypotheses focused on the comparison of messages in which only an environmental motive was acknowledged to messages in which either a financial or a legal was also acknowledged, we nevertheless decided to employ a full-factorial design in order to control for potential interaction effects.

| Procedure
Participants were informed that the questionnaire was focused on opinions about corporate sustainability actions. After assessing dispositional skepticism and participants' support for environmental action as control variables (which will be described in more detail in Section 2.3), a description of a fictional international oil company was presented. The company was said to invest in the development of innovative sustainable technologies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The pricing and service of the company were described as being similar to competitors. Participants were then asked to read a message about these sustainable initiatives that was allegedly displayed at the website of the company. This message contained the experimental manipulation of the communication of corporate motives. Following the message, the perceptions of intrinsic, strategic, and egoistic intentions were measured. All items were assessed on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
Finally, participants were debriefed and thanked for completing the questionnaire.

| Dispositional skepticism
Previous research has repeatedly shown that individual differences in dispositional skepticism can influence attribution processes (De Vries et al., 2015;Forehand & Grier, 2003). We therefore decided to control for dispositional skepticism in the current research. Three items were used to assess dispositional skepticism toward oil companies, α = .84: "I do not believe that oil companies do what they claim"; "I am skeptical about oil companies"; and "I believe that oil companies often do not tell the truth."

| Support for environmental action
We also controlled for the extent to which participants felt that it was important to address environmental problems, which was measured with three items, α = .84: "I think that addressing environmental problems is…": "important," "valuable," and "necessary."

| Stimulus materials
A message about the company's methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was presented on the alleged corporate website. First, a brief description was given of how greenhouse gasses are emitted when fossil fuels are used, and of the company's efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses by, for example, posing strict demands on the quality of their equipment. The heading: "Why does {company} invest in reducing emissions?" was then introduced in the message. In each experimental condition, a subheading "Environment" followed. Subsequently, the impact of greenhouse gasses on climate change and the resulting negative consequences for humanity and nature were described. It was then stated that the company would continue to invest in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions out of concern for the environment.
In the "financial motive present" conditions, an "Economic" subheading was added, after which it was described how the van PROOIJEN ET AL. effectiveness of their operations would lead to lower production costs. The motivation of the company to gain economic benefits by reducing greenhouse gas emissions was then explicitly acknowledged.
Finally, in the "legal motive present" conditions, a "Legislation" subheading was presented, after which it was described that the regulations regarding greenhouse gas emissions were increasingly becoming stricter. The company then explicitly acknowledged that they wanted to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions due to this legislation.

| Manipulation check
The manipulation of communicated legal and financial corporate motives was checked with three individual items: "The company communicated the following motives for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions: Environmental motives, economic motives, legal motives."

| Attributions
Nine items were developed (adapted from Ellen et al., 2006, andDe Vries et al., 2015) to assess attributions. Three items were used to measure intrinsic attributions, α = .71. Strategic attributions were measures with four items α = .71, whereas egoistic attributions were measured with two items, r = .66, p < .001. A Principal Component Analysis revealed that the items clustered together as intended (see Table 2). conditions. Thus, these analyses showed that the manipulations of the corporate motives were successful.

| Attributions
The effects of the acknowledgment of legal and financial motives on

| DISCUSSION
The current research addressed whether the acknowledgment of legal motives for investing in sustainability initiatives could differently influence people's intrinsic, strategic and egoistic attributions than the acknowledgment of financial motives, in contexts where oil companies aim to integrate sustainability practices in their business operations. Results showed that the added acknowledgment of legal motives led to lower intrinsic attributions than did the acknowledgment of environmental motives alone. However, the acknowledgment of legal motives did not affect strategic or egoistic attributions. These results thereby suggest that acknowledging a legal motive in addition to an environmental motive might challenge the perceived sincerity of the environmental concern that a company expresses, but it does not raise suspicion about companies pursuing firm-serving goals. H1 was therefore supported.
The acknowledgment of financial motives in addition to environmental motives resulted in lower intrinsic attributions and higher strategic and egoistic attributions than did the acknowledgment of environmental motives alone. This was in line with H2. Acknowledging financial motives seems to create awareness of the benefits that a company can acquire by investing in the sustainable initiative. In turn, this awareness can promote higher perceived strategic intentions and can increase suspicions that a company might be more engaged in its own gain rather than in improving its environmental impact.

| Implications
The current research is the first to test the effects of acknowledging that a company is investing in sustainability initiatives due to regulatory compliance in its corporate messages. Due to the increasingly stricter legislation regarding the environmental impact of business operations (Escobar & Vredenburg, 2011;Nidumolu et al., 2009)-which is especially pressing in the oil industry-it is important to learn how people respond to companies that openly state that they aim for sustainability in order to conform to legal and institutional standards. Previous research has indicated that consumers respond most positively to CSR communication when the corporate motives that are expressed are aligned with consumers' inferred motives (Forehand & Grier, 2003

| Limitations and future research
A limitation of the current study is that the effects of communicating a legal motive without other (environmental) motives were not examined. Whereas previous research has indicated that communicating only financial motives does not promote different consumer responses than communicating a mixture of both environmental and financial motives (Terwel et al., 2009), it remains unknown whether this also applies for regulatory compliance. The pursuit of van PROOIJEN ET AL. environmental protection and the pursuit of financial goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However, it can be argued that the acknowledgement that a sustainability initiative is not a discretionary effort directly contradicts the expression of sincere concerns for the environmental consequences of greenhouse gas emissions.
As such, it is possible that consumers might respond more negatively to this ambiguity (see also Yoon et al., 2006) than if the promotion of the sustainability initiative focuses solely on regulatory compliance.
Furthermore, our findings are in line with earlier findings by Van Prooijen (2019), who showed that communicating environmental motives promoted higher public trust in wind power initiatives than acknowledging financial motives. However, our findings contradict the research by De Vries et al. (2015) and Terwel et al. (2009), who demonstrated that carbon capture and storage techniques were received more positively when firm-serving motives were acknowledged. Although we suspect that these differences in findings can be explained by the extent to which people are triggered to suspect ulterior corporate motives (Forehand & Grier, 2003), we did not explore the underlying processes that help determine which attributions people make. Examining under which conditions people are likely to engage in causal reasoning processes when corporate sustainability initiatives are communicated provides an interesting avenue for future research.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare no conflict of interest.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

ORCID
Anne-Marie van Prooijen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0841-3075 ENDNOTE 1 A full factorial design was used to test the hypotheses. However, our hypotheses only focused on main effects. We therefore also conducted the analyses without the interaction term, which did not alter the results.