Politická ekonomie X:X | DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1519

Public Environmental Attention and Corporate Greenwashing in China

Qizhi He, Maotao Liu, Xubing Fang, Najaf Iqbal
Qizhi He, School of Statistics and Mathematics, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China
Maotao Liu, School of Public Economics & Administration, Shanghai University of Finance & Economics, Shanghai, China
Xubing Fang, School of Business, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
Najaf Iqbal (corresponding author), School of Accounting, Hubei University of Economics, Wuhan, China; Africa-Asia Center for Sustainability, School of Business, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

Corporate greenwashing is increasingly posing a severe threat to the effective implementation and evaluation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Apart from the regulatory pressure, the active participation of the public in environmental governance is essential in this regard. Through a theoretical and empirical lens, this study systematically examines the impact of public environmental attention (PEA) on corporate greenwashing and its underlying mechanism in the Chinese context. The data from A-share firms and the Baidu search index for prefecture-level cities are gathered from 2011 to 2020 and analyzed using 2SLS and various robustness tests. Results show that PEA can significantly suppress corporate greenwashing. The effect is more significant in high-polluting industries, regions with better rule of law, firms with non-political connections, and older executives with environmental backgrounds. Further analysis shows that PEA reduces greenwashing by inhibiting management’s shortsighted behavior and increasing analysts’ attention. Expanding the government’s ecological concerns and strengthening environmental regulations enhance the inhibiting effect of PEA on greenwashing. The findings remain robust after a series of robustness and endogenous tests.

Keywords: Public environmental attention, corporate greenwashing, management myopia, government environmental regulation

Received: November 9, 2024; Revised: April 21, 2025; Accepted: June 18, 2025; Prepublished online: March 4, 2026 

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