 Financial constraints and corporate greenwashing strategies in ChinaFan Xia, Jiaying Chen, Xue Yang, Xiaoliang Li and Bing Zhang Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 2023, vol. 30, issue 4, 1770-1781 Abstract: Corporate environmental responsibility, in response to the call for sustainable development, has become a critical ethical capital for companies to increase firm values and to obtain resources. However, this also gives rise to the concern of “greenwashing” that companies may selectively release environmental performance information to mislead the public and investors. Using the administrative environmental penalty data of all listed companies in China from 2017 to 2018, this research examines the corporate's greenwashing strategies. Our results show that greenwashing by listed companies in China is widespread, that only 13.6% environmental penalties have been disclosed by companies during our studied period. Companies choose to greenwash environmental performance mainly due to future demand for investment and financing, and companies with higher debt levels are found more likely to engage in greenwashing. Our findings suggest that it is not a rare practice for Chinese companies to risk their business ethics to pursue economic interests. It is necessary to enforce environmental information disclosure for listed companies in China and to increase their costs of unethical behaviors. Date: 2023 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:corsem:v:30:y:2023:i:4:p:1770-1781 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management from John Wiley & Sons |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.