The Drivers of Greenwashing

@article{Delmas2011TheDO,
  title={The Drivers of Greenwashing},
  author={Magali A. Delmas and Vanessa C. Burbano},
  journal={California Management Review},
  year={2011},
  volume={54},
  pages={64 - 87}
}
More and more firms are engaging in greenwashing, misleading consumers about their environmental performance or the environmental benefits of a product or service. The skyrocketing incidence of greenwashing can have profound negative effects on consumer and investor confidence in green products. Mitigating greenwashing is particularly challenging in a context of limited and uncertain regulation. This article examines the external (both institutional and market), organizational and individual… 
View on SAGE
environment.ucla.edu
968 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
73
Background Citations
342
Methods Citations
14
Results Citations
8

968 Citations

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…

Greenwashing in the Information Industry

Digital technology companies are increasingly listening to consumers and publicly moving towards more sustainable environmental practices and policies. However, many of these companies employ…

The Means and End of Greenwash

Corporate claims about environmental performance have increased rapidly in recent years, as has the incidence of greenwash, that is, communication that misleads people into forming overly positive…

Does it pay to be a greenwasher or a brownwasher

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,…

Greenwashing – fake green/environmental marketing

In this paper, the authors will present forms of fake green/environmental marketing, and above all, greenwashing, its manifestations, as well as its adverse impact. Along with the examples from the…

GREENWASHING: A PROPOSAL TO RESTRICT ITS SPREAD

Recent years have seen a rapid rise in the number of firms publicly touting the environmental merits of their products or their operational practices. This is driven by the changing societal concern…

Does Greenwashing Pay Off? Understanding the Relationship Between Environmental Actions and Environmental Legitimacy

Do firms gain environmental legitimacy when they conform to external expectations regarding the natural environment? Drawing on institutional logic and signaling theory, we investigate sources of…

Combating greenwashers in emerging markets: A game-theoretical exploration of firms, customers and government regulations

Identifying and Mitigating Greenwashing of Carbon Utilization Products

This study explores strategies for identifying and mitigating greenwashing of carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies. A literature review was conducted to determine the most common forms…

Avoiding the greenwashing trap: between CSR communication and stakeholder engagement

The paper analyses key elements of communication that may lead to accusations that a company is engaging in practices of greenwashing failing to create stakeholder engagement. According to…
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 58 REFERENCES

Consumer Protection in the Eco-Mark Era: A Preliminary Survey and Assessment of Anti-Greenwashing Activity and Eco-Mark Enforcement

We stand at the dawn of the Eco-mark Era – a period in which green branding, advertising environmentally friendly products and services, and touting sustainable business practices will be pervasive…

When Are Corporate Environmental Policies a Form of Greenwashing?

Do environmental policy statements accurately represent corporate commitment to environmental sustainability? Because companies are not required by law to publish environmental policy statements or…

Greenwash: Corporate Environmental Disclosure Under Threat of Audit

We develop an economic model of “greenwash,” in which a firm strategically discloses environmental information and a non-governmental organization (NGO) may audit and penalize the firm for failing to…

Social Accountability and Corporate Greenwashing

Critics of SRI have said little about the integrity of corporate representations resulting in screening inclusion or exclusion. This is surprising given social and environmental accounting research…

Green Schemes: Corporate Environmental Strategies and Their Implementation

Many corporations now recognize the importance of establishing a "proactive" environmental strategy. This article develops a framework for environmental strategy implementation based on case studies…

GREEN SPIN EVERYWHERE: HOW GREENWASHING REVEALS THE LIMITS OF THE CSR PARADIGM

The article argues that the volunteer-led corporate social responsibility (CSR) paradigm of the last decade has both coddled and promoted the proliferation of “green spin.” The paper proceeds from…

A Framework for Analyzing Environmental Voluntary Agreements

In the 1990s, Environmental Voluntary Agreements (VAs) involving regulatory agencies and industry have emerged as the promise of the future in environmental policy circles. The collaborative…

CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES AND THEIR IMPLEMENTATION

ecently, many companies have taken a proactive approach to the envi-ronment, transforming the nature of their organization and productsto reflect this. They are discovering that well-formulated…

Communicating Environmental Information: Are Marketing Claims on Packaging Misleading?

The increased usage of questionable environmental marketing claims has become an issue of concern for academics, policy makers and consumers. Much of the research to date, has focused on the accuracy…

Measuring Corporate Environmental Performance: The Trade-Offs of Sustainability Ratings

The article studies the sustainability rankings of 15 public firms in the chemical sector. It focuses on the environmental aspect of CSR and makes an assessment about firms’ environmental performance…
...