ABUDUKEYOUMU, XIAYIDAN (2026) Specificity, Verifiability, and Regulatory Context: A Cross-Market Analysis of Product-Level Sustainability Claims in the Beauty Industry. Master thesis, Sustainable Entrepreneurship (SE).
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Abstract
This thesis examines how product-level sustainability claims in the beauty industries differ in terms of specificity and verifiability in the Chinese and the Dutch market, and further explores how these differences can be explained by their respective regulatory contexts. Based on the literature on information asymmetry, credence attributes, and greenwashing, this study views sustainability claims as product-level environmental information that consumers find difficult to verify independently. Therefore, whether a claim is specific and supported by evidence, standards, or certification becomes key to assessing its quality. Through qualitative content analysis of 113 product-level sustainability claims from L’Oréal China, L’Oréal Netherlands, Proya, and Naïf, this study codes the claims according to claim category, specificity and verifiability score, and further conducts an explanatory analysis in the regulatory frameworks of China and the Netherlands/EU. The study found that the Netherlands sample scored slightly higher on specificity, indicating that Dutch claims rely less on highly generic sustainability language; the China sample scored slightly higher on verifiability, primarily due to Proya’s use of certification-based claims. At the same time, the Netherlands sample placed greater emphasis on product lifecycle impact metrics, while the China sample focused more on packaging materials and reduction, as well as sourcing and traceability. These findings suggest that the differences between the two countries cannot be simplified to a single difference in regulatory stringency or simply attributed to one market having stricter sustainability governance. Therefore, this paper treats the regulatory framework as an interpretive lens rather than a causal explanation.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Name supervisor: | Folmer, E.C. |
| Date Deposited: | 06 Jul 2026 09:04 |
| Last Modified: | 06 Jul 2026 09:04 |
| URI: | https://campus-fryslan.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/880 |
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