From greenwashing to genuine action: Impact of a CEO's green experience

Xian Lin, Weitao Shen, Linjia Song and Xin Yang

Finance Research Letters, 2025, vol. 80, issue C

Abstract: This study investigates the impact of a CEO's green experience on a firm's greenwashing behavior. Using manually collected data from the sample of Chinese public firms, we find that firms led by CEOs with green experience are less likely to engage in greenwashing. Additionally, these CEOs help their firms obtain additional green subsidies and attract more green investors. Cross-sectional results indicate that firms with weaker corporate governance, less rigorous environmental regulations, and larger earnings expectation gaps show a pronounced reduction in greenwashing. These findings suggest that a CEO's green experience drives the firms to adopt genuine environmentally responsible practices.

Keywords: Green experience; Greenwashing; Imprinting theory; Green preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612325006038
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:finlet:v:80:y:2025:i:c:s1544612325006038

DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2025.107345

Access Statistics for this article

Finance Research Letters is currently edited by R. Gençay

More articles in Finance Research Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().