Communicating Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF): A National Content Analysis of Major U.S. Airlines
Presentation Type
Short presentation 10-15 minutes
In Person or Zoom Presentation
Virtual via Zoom
Campus
Worldwide
Status
Faculty
Faculty/Staff Department
Humanities & Communication
Presentation Description/Abstract
This project will analyze how major U.S. passenger airlines communicate about sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in official documents. SAF has become a prominent component of aviation decarbonization strategies and is increasingly presented as a pathway toward lower-carbon aviation. Because airlines use public-facing sustainability communication to explain their environmental commitments, it is important to examine how they describe SAF and substantiate their environmental claims. This research aims to contribute to the refinement of SAF communication strategies and to broader discussions about corporate environmental communication and public understanding of sustainability claims.
Previous research shows that airline sustainability communication varies in breadth, depth, accessibility, and consistency, and that airlines differ in how easily travelers can understand sustainability information (Becken & Mackey, 2017; Guix et al., 2022; Tsoi & Liu, 2025). However, much of this research focuses on voluntary carbon-offset (VCO) programs, while increasingly prominent SAF-specific communication within the industry has received limited systematic scholarly attention.
This project addresses this gap by examining what airlines disclose about SAF, how specifically they describe it, and whether they provide sufficient information for stakeholders to evaluate their environmental claims. The study draws on signaling theory, which explains how organizations use information to reduce information asymmetry between themselves and their stakeholders (Spence, 1973), to examine how airlines use SAF communication to demonstrate environmental responsibility and signal the credibility of their sustainability efforts.
We will first build a corpus of airlines' SAF-related communication by extracting relevant content from official airline sources, including websites, sustainability reports, and news releases. We will then conduct a content analysis examining the quantity and transparency of SAF communication, as well as the types of evidence airlines use to support their claims. With the anticipated data, we will describe and compare airlines’ communication strategies and the quality of their SAF communication across airline.
Keywords
Sustainable Aviation Fuel, Airlines, Content Analysis, Corporate Social Responsibility, Signaling Theory
Communicating Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF): A National Content Analysis of Major U.S. Airlines
This project will analyze how major U.S. passenger airlines communicate about sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in official documents. SAF has become a prominent component of aviation decarbonization strategies and is increasingly presented as a pathway toward lower-carbon aviation. Because airlines use public-facing sustainability communication to explain their environmental commitments, it is important to examine how they describe SAF and substantiate their environmental claims. This research aims to contribute to the refinement of SAF communication strategies and to broader discussions about corporate environmental communication and public understanding of sustainability claims.
Previous research shows that airline sustainability communication varies in breadth, depth, accessibility, and consistency, and that airlines differ in how easily travelers can understand sustainability information (Becken & Mackey, 2017; Guix et al., 2022; Tsoi & Liu, 2025). However, much of this research focuses on voluntary carbon-offset (VCO) programs, while increasingly prominent SAF-specific communication within the industry has received limited systematic scholarly attention.
This project addresses this gap by examining what airlines disclose about SAF, how specifically they describe it, and whether they provide sufficient information for stakeholders to evaluate their environmental claims. The study draws on signaling theory, which explains how organizations use information to reduce information asymmetry between themselves and their stakeholders (Spence, 1973), to examine how airlines use SAF communication to demonstrate environmental responsibility and signal the credibility of their sustainability efforts.
We will first build a corpus of airlines' SAF-related communication by extracting relevant content from official airline sources, including websites, sustainability reports, and news releases. We will then conduct a content analysis examining the quantity and transparency of SAF communication, as well as the types of evidence airlines use to support their claims. With the anticipated data, we will describe and compare airlines’ communication strategies and the quality of their SAF communication across airline.