Research on the Impact of Greenwashing Behavior in ESG Information Disclosure on Foreign Direct Investment of Enterprises
With the widespread global attention to ESG investment concepts,an increasing number of companies engaged in outward foreign direct investment are attempting to improve their competitiveness in the international market by disclosing ESG information.However,companies may exaggerate and embellish their ESG information by adopting"greenwashing"behavior to mislead consumers and investors.In addition,o-verseas operating companies may be mistakenly labeled as engaging in"greenwashing"due to differences in the application of domestic and foreign rules,thus incurring the risk of being perceived as greenwashers.Therefore,studying the impact of greenwashing on the outward direct investment of Chinese companies is of great significance.This article uses data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2020 to ex-amine the impact of greenwashing on enterprises'outward foreign direct investment.The findings suggest that greenwashing has a significant negative impact on the decision to undertake outward direct investment,investment scale,number of investment countries or regions,and in-vestment frequency.Mechanism analysis reveals that greenwashing may stimulate outward foreign direct investment by alleviating financing constraints and inflating perceptions of corporate ESG performance.Conversely,it can impede OFDI by suppressing green technology innova-tion.Further research has found that the more effective the government's environmental regulatory policies are,the higher the level of atten-tion paid by financial institution analysts and research reports,the more effective the role of third-party certification agencies is,the higher the level of media supervision,the lower the likelihood of enterprises implementing greenwashing behavior,and the smaller the negative impact of greenwashing on enterprises'OFDI.In addition,the negative impact of greenwashing on enterprises is more pronounced in non-polluting in-dustries and the eastern region,but less so in heavily polluting industries and the central and western regions.The research in this article en-hances theoretical insights into the drivers of OFDI and offers practical guidance for Chinese enterprises to align with the global green transfor-mation and engage more deeply in the global industrial division of labor.
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
