ABSTRACT

Greenwashing has long been considered a viable strategy in the literature and academic research has explored its drivers from an institutional viewpoint. This paper extends the literature by considering greenwashing from a financial management viewpoint. It is found that when firm stock volatility is low, when the weighted average cost of capital is high, when firm pricing power is strong, and when information asymmetry is high, that the financial incentives for greenwashing are strong. The potential returns to greenwashing are weakly related to the level of systemic risk of the firm. The simulation results of the model indicate that in the current era that the returns to greenwashing are quite limited without a lot of information asymmetry. The results indicate that in previous eras, there were more opportunities for greenwashing. Overall, the results suggest that for low-and average-beta firms that organizational-level drivers and individual-level psychological drivers are more important in driving greenwashing decisions. The results also show why stock-based incentives do not support corporate social responsibility.

摘要

长期以来，文献中“漂绿”一直被认为是一种可行的策略，学术研究也从制度角度探讨了其驱动因素。本文通过从财务管理的角度考虑绿色清洗来扩展文献。研究发现，当企业股票波动性较低、加权平均资本成本较高、企业定价能力较强、信息不对称较高时，洗绿的财务激励较强。漂绿的潜在回报与公司的系统性风险水平微弱相关。模型的模拟结果表明，在当前时代，在没有大量信息不对称的情况下，洗绿的回报相当有限。结果表明，在以前的时代，漂绿的机会更多。全面的，结果表明，对于低贝塔值和平均贝塔值的公司来说，组织层面的驱动因素和个人层面的心理驱动因素在推动绿色清洗决策方面更为重要。结果还说明了为什么股票激励不支持企业社会责任。