The agency of greenwashing

Marco Ghitti, Gianfranco Gianfrate () and Lorenza Palma
Additional contact information
Gianfranco Gianfrate: EDHEC Business School
Lorenza Palma: Bocconi University

Journal of Management & Governance, 2024, vol. 28, issue 3, No 8, 905-941

Abstract: Abstract As climate change increasingly challenges business models, the disclosure of firm environmental performance casts growing attention by corporate stakeholders. This creates wider opportunities and incentives for greenwash behaviors. We propose a novel set of measures to capture greenwashing and we investigate the association between greenwashing and corporate governance features that traditionally mitigate agency problems. We show that board characteristics are variously associated with the apparent degree of corporate greenwashing. Firms with more independent directors tend to greenwash more, the presence of female board directors seems to have a positive impact on the degree of greenwashing, while the effect of board size on greenwashing remains ambiguous. Importantly, we find that greenwashing reduces firm value.

Keywords: Greenwashing; ESG; Corporate governance; Board; Valuation; Climate change; Firm value (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G32 M14 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10997-023-09683-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jmgtgv:v:28:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s10997-023-09683-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/10997/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10997-023-09683-8

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Management & Governance is currently edited by Lino Cinquini

More articles in Journal of Management & Governance from Springer, Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().