Advertising and Corporate Green Innovation: From the Perspective of Greenwashing

Jiaying Li, Ying Fu and Ying Wu ()
Additional contact information
Jiaying Li: School of Finance, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, 555 Liutai Avenue, Wenjiang, Chengdu 611130, China
Ying Fu: School of Finance, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, 555 Liutai Avenue, Wenjiang, Chengdu 611130, China
Ying Wu: School of Business, Nanjing Normal University, No. 1, Wenyuan Road, Xianlin University City, Nanjing 210023, China

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 23, 1-14

Abstract: Advertising has been regarded as a tool for greenwashing. However, no studies have systematically tested this view. Using a large sample of Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2023, this paper examines the effect of advertising on critical environmental action, namely green innovation. The empirical results show that advertising has a negative impact on green innovation. This finding is robust to a battery of robustness tests and is more prominent for state-owned enterprises and heavy pollution-emitting firms. Further analysis shows that advertising lowers the quantity and quality of green innovation. This finding means that advertising is a tool for greenwashing and seriously damages the corporate environmental protection ability.

Keywords: advertising expenses; greenwashing; green innovation; environmental actions; innovation quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/23/10488/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/23/10488/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:23:p:10488-:d:1532980

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().