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ABSTRACT Companies increasingly claim to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) not only for economic but also for ecological and social purposes. However, in light of rising greenwashing, bluewashing, and ethics washing, the impact of the communicated rationale on employees' initial attitude toward AI introduction remains unclear. Therefore, in a 3 × 2 between‐subjects online vignette experiment with 426 German employees, we examined how the stated reason for AI adoption (ecological, social, economic) and the company trustworthiness (low, high) influence message credibility and employees' initial attitudes toward AI. Ecological and social rationales were perceived less credible. Company trustworthiness did not affect message credibility. Initial attitudes toward AI were significantly lower for social rationales rather than economic ones. Further, pro‐environmental initial attitudes reduced the influence of message credibility on initial attitudes toward the AI for ecological sustainability—an effect we refer to as environmental wishful thinking. This study advances the understanding of employees' initial attitudes toward and the management of organizational adoption of AI for sustainability.
Baumgartner et al. (Wed,) studied this question.