The DOI matches its Crossref record; 9 of the 9 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Does it pay to be a greenwasher or a brownwasher?
Abstract
The growing attention to corporate green practices and the increased competition in global markets have pressed companies to disclose information about their environmental footprints. In doing so, some firms tend to either overstate or understate their environmental commitments by adopting so‐called “greenwashing” or “brownwashing” strategies, respectively. In this paper, we analyze the impact of different types of environmental communication strategies on firm value and operating performance using a panel of 3,490 publicly traded companies from 58 countries and 19 industries. Results show that it does not pay to be a greenwasher, whereas the decision to not properly communicate a firm's environmental commitment is associated with lower financial performance. Therefore, this study highlights the importance of having not only effective green practices, but also coherent communication of environmental strategies. This is the first attempt to empirically model the impact of greenwashing and brownwashing strategies on corporate financial performance in a longitudinal setting.
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Cites
A Caution Regarding Rules of Thumb for Variance Inflation Factors
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Bansal, P., & Roth, K. (2000) · Academy of Management Journal · doi:10.2307/1556363 · Cited by 4,020
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A contingent resource-based view of proactive corporate environmental strategy
Aragón-Correa, J. A., & Sharma, S. (2003) · Academy of Management Review · doi:10.5465/amr.2003.8925233 · Cited by 2,362
Does It Pay to Be Green? A Systematic Overview
Stefan, A., & Paul, L. (2008) · Academy of Management Perspectives · doi:10.5465/amp.2008.35590353 · Cited by 1,759
The Means and End of Greenwash
Lyon, T. P., & Montgomery, A. W. (2015) · Organization & Environment · doi:10.1177/1086026615575332 · Cited by 1,636
Greenwash: Corporate Environmental Disclosure under Threat of Audit
Lyon, T. P., & Maxwell, J. W. (2011) · Journal of Economics & Management Strategy · doi:10.1111/j.1530-9134.2010.00282.x · Cited by 1,569
Gray Shades of Green: Causes and Consequences of Green Skepticism
Leonidou, C. N., & Skarmeas, D. (2017) · Journal of Business Ethics · doi:10.1007/s10551-015-2829-4 · Cited by 589
Strategic Silence: Withholding Certification Status as a Hypocrisy Avoidance Tactic
Carlos, W. C., & Lewis, B. W. (2018) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.1177/0001839217695089 · Cited by 393
Cited by
Greenwashing and environmental communication: Effects on stakeholders' perceptions
Torelli, R., Balluchi, F., & Lazzini, A. (2020) · Business Strategy and the Environment · doi:10.1002/bse.2373 · Cited by 577
Xing, C., Zhang, Y., & Tripe, D. (2021) · International Review of Financial Analysis · doi:10.1016/j.irfa.2021.101838 · Cited by 417
Greenwashing behavior and firm value – From the perspective of board characteristics
Chen, P., & Dagestani, A. A. (2023) · Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management · doi:10.1002/csr.2488 · Cited by 269
Testa, F., Sarti, S., & Frey, M. (2019) · Business Strategy and the Environment · doi:10.1002/bse.2234 · Cited by 243
Self-citationSantos, C., Coelho, A., & Marques, A. (2024) · Management Review Quarterly · doi:10.1007/s11301-023-00337-5 · Cited by 235
Metadata
- Authors
- Testa, F., Miroshnychenko, I., Barontini, R., & Frey, M.
- Venue
- Business Strategy and the Environment
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2018-04-10
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 1104-1116
- ISSN
- 0964-4733 (ISSN-L)
- 1099-0836
- OpenAlex
- W2797198753
- Cited by
- 255
- References
- 9
- FWCI
- 15.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Testa, F., Miroshnychenko, I., Barontini, R., & Frey, M. (2018). Does it pay to be a greenwasher or a brownwasher? Business Strategy and the Environment. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2058
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
