Search results

This study explores the contagion of greenwashing strategies among ESG mutual funds. It investigates how the greenwashing behaviors of peer funds within the same family influence a fund’s decision to engage in greenwashing. The research also examines the impact of greenwashing on genuine ESG funds and explores the mechanisms through which greenwashing strategies spread across ESG mutual funds.

This paper employs a two-stage least squares regression model with cross-fund returns standard deviation as an instrumental variable to disentangle the peer effects of greenwashing from family-level characteristics. The analysis incorporates various fund characteristics and introduces four contagion channels through which greenwashing may influence genuine ESG funds.

The study finds greenwashing behavior in ESG funds is positively influenced by similar practices within their fund family. Larger assets under management and older funds with higher management fees show resilience against greenwashing influences, while team-managed funds are more susceptible. Additionally, socially responsible investors struggle to distinguish between genuine and greenwashing ESG funds, which may contribute to the persistence of greenwashing practices.

This paper contributes to the literature by delineating the mechanisms of greenwashing contagion within ESG mutual funds. It also examines the demand-side incentives for adopting greenwashing strategies, offering insights into the implications for fund flows and investor behavior. This study is among the first to analyze the contagion effects of greenwashing strategies across an extensive network of ESG funds, enriching our understanding of the broader impacts of greenwashing in the context of socially responsible investing.

Using social and moral identity theory, this study aims to investigate the influence of perceived greenwashing on employee work attitudes by using social and moral identity theory. By examining the relationships between perceived greenwashing, employee cynicism, work alienation and turnover intention, this study unveils essential mechanisms that shed light on the complex relationship between these variables.

The study gathered data from a sample of 267 employees in the service industry and used variance-based structuring equation modeling to test the hypothesized associations. The results of the study indicated a positive relationship between perceived greenwashing and turnover intention.

Employee cynicism and work alienation emerged as crucial mediating factors, revealing the underlying psychological dynamics linking perceived greenwashing to turnover intention. Moreover, the study identified organizational pride as a powerful moderator that mitigates the adverse effects of greenwashing on employee attitudes.

Genuine and transparent environmental practices are crucial in the service industry to avoid misleading claims, safeguard reputation and establish trust. Leaders should exemplify genuine commitment to environmental practices, serving as role models. Regular and honest feedback mechanisms should be established to gauge employee perceptions of the organization’s environmental initiatives. Educating employees about the signs of deceptive practices can empower them to make informed judgments, reducing the likelihood of falling victim to misrepresentations and mitigating associated negative outcomes.

The current research seeks to shed light on the profound impact of greenwashing on employees, an area that has been surprisingly overlooked. The study responds to the call of the antecedents that influence employees’ intentions to leave their organizations. The study explored the vital relationship between perceived greenwashing and employee attitudes, thereby contributing valuable insights to the existing literature on the sustainable practices of organizations, particularly those in the service industry.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize insights from the emerging work in accounting on greenwashing and sustainability assurance and propose an agenda for future research in this area.

This article offers an original analysis of papers published on greenwashing and sustainability assurance research in the field of accounting. It adopts a systematic literature review and a narrative approach to analyse the dominant themes and key findings in this new and rapidly evolving field. From this overview, specific avenues for future research are identified.

In the past few years there has been a substantial spike in concern relating to greenwashing among academics, practitioners, regulators and society. This growing concern has only partly been reflected in the research literature. To date, research has primarily focused on: (1) the characteristics of firms adopting sustainability assurance, (2) the challenges facing sustainability auditors, (3) the development of appropriate assurance standards and regulations, and (4) capital market responses to greenwashing and sustainability auditing/assurance. Three key future research issues with respect to greenwashing are identified: (1) the future of standard-setter attempts to regulate greenwashing, (2) professional jockeying in sustainability reporting assurance, and (3) capital market opportunities and challenges relating to greenwashing and assurance.

Despite the profound economic and reputational impact of greenwashing and the rapid development of sustainability assurance services, research in accounting remains fragmented and emergent. This review identifies avenues offering considerable scope for inter-disciplinarity and bridging the divide between academia and practice.

The chapter describes the research objectives and different steps of the systematic literature review of existing studies on greenwashing. Both academics and practitioners may find this literature review useful, as it identifies the key features of the greenwashing research in a wide range of disciplines (management, marketing, accounting, corporate communication, etc.). The systematic literature review sheds light on the greenwashing types (and research gaps) in which the phenomenon takes shape. Time horizon (1990–mid 2021), keywords selection for queries on academic search engines, data collection, filtering criteria, etc., are explained and discussed in detail before presenting the main results in terms of frequency of publications over years, leading outlets in greenwashing research, trending articles, levels of analysis, geographical affiliation of first authors, theoretical approaches and methods used in this field of research. The chapter concludes by summarising the main types of greenwashing and possible avenues of research.

There is emerging evidence in the accounting literature that investors react negatively to corporate greenwashing. But does that hold for all investors, or do different types of investors react differently? This paper aims to study retail investors’ responses to media reports on corporate greenwashing and how these responses depend upon the investors’ social value orientation. The authors argue that media reporting on corporate greenwashing negatively affects the rationale for allocating funds to firms engaging in greenwashing. The authors also expect this reaction to be stronger for prosocial investors compared to proself investors.

The authors conduct an online experiment with 229 participants representing retail investors in the German-speaking countries.

The results show that retail investors who received media reports on deceptive disclosure invest more funds in the company that does not engage in greenwashing (and less in the firm that engages in greenwashing) than investors who did not receive these reports. The authors’ results provide novel evidence that this effect primarily holds for investors with a prosocial value orientation. Finally, the authors’ data show that lower trust in the firm that engages in greenwashing partially mediates the effect of media reports on investor choices.

The authors provide unique evidence how different types of investors react to media reports on greenwashing. The authors find that moral motives, rather than risk-return considerations, drive investor responses to greenwashing. Overall, these findings support the important function of the media as an intermediary in stock market participation and highlight the pivotal role of individual traits in investors’ responses to greenwashing.

The chapter explores how different theoretical traditions address the gaps between talk (symbolic communication practices) and actions (substantive performance) in organisations. The chapter details the main theoretical approaches in greenwashing research, namely legitimacy theory, attribution theory, institutional theory, signaling theory, impression management approaches and constructivist approaches. Among these latter, Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) challenges the dominant view in literature and suggests abandoning the traditional dichotomy of talk versus action. The different approaches to studying greenwashing are presented along with main questions and research methods used in each field and sub-field of study. For each theoretical approach the main research trends and novel research questions are proposed. Researchers, doctoral and post-graduate students may appreciate this as standalone contribution to guide their future studies in this area, by designing their research avenues based on the best practices in the field.

This final chapter moves from a firm-level perspective to a more general level to connect individual organisational decisions on corporate sustainability to current and future societal and environmental challenges. The chapter starts by illustrating greenhushing, seen as a deceptive strategic silence that occurs when companies voluntarily decrease their communication on sustainability issues. The emergence of novel forms of greenwashing stresses the need to integrate the principles of sustainability in their corporate strategies in an authentic way, and to activate a virtuous circuit of sustainability sensegiving-sensemaking, in which the company can recognise the contribution of stakeholders in decision-making. The discussion then addresses some unresolved tensions in sustainability communication approaches that cause ‘deep-rooted’ greenwashing, thus paving the way for a systemic approach to the phenomenon. The chapter thus presents some speculative sketches that illustrate the social, organisational and environmental costs and benefits of an authentic approach to corporate sustainability. The discussion emphasises the need to establish a shared sustainability culture at different systems' levels and within organisations to avoid environmental and social damaging practices and widen corporate objectives to initiate long-lasting changes. Policy and decision-makers may appreciate this effort to identify responsibilities for each component and priority areas for action.

This paper aims to see how scholarly research on Greenwashing practices and behaviour has progressed in the 21st century. There has been a lot of empirical, exploratory and conceptual work done on Green marketing, sustainable marketing and environmental marketing. However, there have been few attempts to produce a comprehensive scientific mapping of Greenwashing as a niche topic. As a result, the study’s goal is to elicit research trends through knowledge structure synthesis.

A Bibliometric Analysis on the topic of Greenwashing practices was undertaken on 355 publications. For this, a scientific search strategy was run on the Scopus database for the period 1996–2021. The study was conducted using Biblioshiny, a Web-based application that is part of the Bibliometric package. Important journals, countries, authors, keywords and affiliations were found using the software’s automated workflow and thematic evolution, citations, co-citations and social network analysis were performed.

The study indicated a gradual increase in the research related to Greenwashing practices. The findings show a relative concentration of more influential work in the said domain amongst a handful of research scholars. Many influential studies have occurred after 2007, and a rally is seen in the studies on Greenwashing till 2020. The authors can say that the rigour of research has started increasing since then. Geographic dispersion of the work has shown that the USA followed by the UK dominates the scholarly inquiry and these countries have major collaboration with European and Asian researchers. The 10 most productive countries were examined, and it was discovered that the USA contributed the majority of the publications, with the UK and China coming in second and third place, respectively, in terms of publication in the said sector. In addition to the domain’s conceptual structure, the study exposes the domain’s social and Intellectual structure. This brings up new possibilities for Greenwashing studies in the future.

The present research is a Bibliometric analysis that is restricted to science mapping, and hence, limitations apply to the said studies. Researchers can use systematic literature review to build a robust conceptual foundation in the future. The Scopus database was used for this study because it has a greater number of high-quality journals in structured forms that are compatible with Bibliometrix software.

Greenwashing practices and behaviour, as well as their links to sustainability, are discussed in this paper. It highlights the most often stated challenges in the discipline and suggests possible research topics. It provides future scholars with information on this discipline’s issues, contexts and collaboration opportunities.

The current study can give further directions to the researchers for conducting rigorous research on Greenwashing behaviour and practices and will guide the policymakers to formulate policies in the field of non-sustainable activities, with Greenwashing being one of them.

A lot of work is done by the scientific community in Green marketing research, and a lot of literature is available on Green and Sustainable marketing practices. However, there is still a need felt for more extensive and rigorous research on the evolution of Greenwashing methods. This study makes a significant addition in that it brings together the scattered literature in the field, focuses on important sources, authors and documents, and investigates Greenwashing techniques and behaviour, which is the other side of the sustainable practices coin.

This review aims to put forth a conceptual understanding of greenwashing. It also identifies the antecedents and consequences of customer perceptions of greenwashing in the hospitality industry in the recent context, which has remained superficial and fragmented in previous studies.

Published literature between the years 2000 and 2022 was examined, following the scoping review approach. After screening out irrelevant and duplicate literature, a total of 54 published literature items were considered.

Despite a profound understanding of customer perceptions of greenwashing, the findings show that the majority of customer perceptions of greenwashing are determined by the green efforts of hotel operators, through means such as green knowledge sharing, green marketing, the disclosure of green information, resource conservation claims and environmental certification. Additionally, customer perceptions of greenwashing determine a variety of customer green behaviors where customer green attitude plays an intervening role.

A benefit of the proposed conceptual model for hospitality stakeholders is that it aids in understanding customer suspicion regarding the legitimacy of hotel green practices. The conceptual model of this review, and a 2 × 3 matrix on hotel environmental performance and communication, provides a theoretical lens for scholars and practitioners in the hospitality industry to develop effective green strategies and practices, reducing customer perceptions of greenwashing while positively influencing customer green behavior. This review presents a launching platform from which research on greenwashing in the hospitality industry can skyrocket.

In previous studies, the conceptual understanding of greenwashing in hospitality has remained inconsistent, shallow and mixed. This review identifies the different and previously deeply underexplored antecedents and consequences of customer perceptions of greenwashing and presents them in a conceptual model.

When a company practices greenwashing, it violates consumers' expectations by deliberately deceiving them about their environmental practices or the benefits of their products/services. This study investigated the effects of greenwashing on corporate reputation and brand hate. Furthermore, this study explored the mediating effects of perceived environmental performance and green perceived risk.

A survey design using cross-sectional primary data from 420 Portuguese consumers who identified and recognized brands engaged in greenwashing was employed. The proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling techniques.

This study's findings show that consumer perceptions of greenwashing may damage brands. The results show that greenwashing has a negative effect on corporate reputation through perceived environmental performance and green perceived risk. Additionally, greenwashing has a positive direct effect on brand hate and a negative effect on green perceived risk. Therefore, reducing greenwashing practices can improve consumers' perceptions of corporate environmental performance, buffer green perceived risk, and ultimately enhance corporate reputation. This can lead to positive relationships with customers.

Based on signaling and expectancy violation theories, this study develops a new framework highlighting the detrimental effects of greenwashing on brands. The combination of these theories provides the right framework to understand how greenwashing may lead to extreme feelings like brand hate and negative perceptions of corporate reputation, thus advancing the current research that lacks studies on the association between these constructs.