The Signaling Effect of Biophilic Job Posts: Do Applicants Trade Green for Green?

Abstract

Contemporary job postings increasingly rely on visual content to attract applicants through social media platforms, calling for scholarly attention to organizational aesthetics in recruitment. This study accordingly examines the signaling function of biophilic workspace design conveyed in job posts. We integrate theorizing on organizational aesthetics and biophilia with signaling theory to posit that biophilic job posts serve a dual signaling role as both a stimulus of signal attention by eliciting a visceral response and as a signaled source of credible information by evoking an evolutionary disposed cognitive interpretation. More specifically, we model pleasure and arousal as an indicator of stimulated attention, organizational attraction and the willingness to trade pay as evaluated responses to the signal, and attributions of communal organizational traits as an intervening interpretation of the signal—consistent with the role of symbolic attributes in prospective applicant evaluation of organizations. Three primary experiments largely support our predictions. Overall, this research extends the function of aesthetic signals to organizational signaling, validates organizational aesthetics as a stimulus of directed evaluation, and expands the scope of biophilic theory in organizational research. Findings also inform the practical question of whether biophilic job posts function as a non-pecuniary differentiator in recruitment.