Greenwash: Corporate Environmental Disclosure under Threat of Audit
Abstract
We develop an economic model of “greenwash,” in which a firm strategically discloses environmental information and an activist may audit and penalize the firm for disclosing positive but not negative aspects of its environmental profile. We fully characterize the model's equilibria, and derive a variety of predictions about disclosure behavior. We rationalize conflicting results in the empirical literature, finding a nonmonotonic relationship between a firm's expected environmental performance and its environmental disclosures. Greater activist pressure deters greenwash, but induces some firms to disclose less about their environmental performance. Environmental management systems discourage firms with poor expected environmental performance from greenwashing, which may justify public policies encouraging firms to adopt them.
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Activists react more negatively to organizations that claim to be virtuous than to organizations that never make such claims.
“activists react more negatively to organizations that lay claim to being virtuous than to organizations that never make such claims”
From Strategic Silence: Withholding Certification Status as a Hypocrisy Avoidance Tactic (2018) · cites this paper as Lyon and Maxwell, 2011
Media and environmental activists have increased efforts to hold corporations accountable to their claims and watch for environmental hypocrisy, often labeled greenwashing.
“The media and environmental activists have also increased their efforts to hold corporations accountable to their claims and have thus become vigilant observers, watching for evidence of environmental hypocrisy, often labeled as ''greenwashing''”
From Strategic Silence: Withholding Certification Status as a Hypocrisy Avoidance Tactic (2018) · cites this paper as Lyon and Maxwell, 2011
Various environmental aspects of products, namely sustainability, are not verifiable even when consumers consume products that falsely claim it.
“From the consumers' perspective, it is worrisome that various environmental aspects of products, namely, sustainability, are not verifiable even when consuming products that falsely claim it [8,9].”
From Are You Environmentally Conscious Enough to Differentiate between Greenwashed and Sustainable Items? A Global Consumers Perspective (2020) · cites this paper as [9]
Some companies mask negative information about their impact or only partially disclose this information, while others intentionally mislead using false advertisements claiming environmental responsibility.
“Some companies mask negative information about their impact or only partially disclose this information (Lyon & Maxwell, 2011;Marquis et al., 2016), while others intentionally mislead using false advertisements claiming that they are environmentally responsible when, in fact, they are not (Martínez et al., 2020;Szabo & Webster, 2021).”
From Sustainable clothing: Why conspicuous consumption and greenwashing matter (2023) · cites this paper as Lyon & Maxwell, 2011
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- Authors
- Lyon, T. P., & Maxwell, J. W.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Economics & Management Strategy
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2011-02-24
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 3-41
- ISSN
- 1058-6407 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3125595071
- Cited by
- 1,569
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 280 · 2025: 224 · 2024: 189 · 2023: 168 · 2022: 104 · 2021: 102 · 2020: 106 · 2019: 63 · 2018: 63 · 2017: 58 · 2016: 34 · 2015: 44 · 2014: 42 · 2013: 28 · 2012: 41
- FWCI
- 125.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Economics & Management Strategy (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Deep Blue (University of Michigan) (submittedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Environmental Sustainability in Business
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance
- Keywords
- greenwashing, corporate environmental disclosure, activist investors, corporate auditing, disclosure incentives, environmental performance, environmental management systems, strategic disclosure
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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