The Agency of Greenwashing

As climate change increasingly challenges business models, the disclosure of firm environmental performance casts growing attention by corporate stakeholders. This creates wider opportunities and incentives for greenwashing behaviors.

We propose a novel measure of greenwashing and investigate its determinants and consequences for US firms.

We show the that board characteristics are variously associated with the apparent degree of corporate greenwashing.

Importantly, we find that greenwashing reduces firm value