気候意識の高い投資家への対応：投資家の気候関心は企業のグリーンウォッシングを誘発するか？

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:投資家関心を外部ガバナンスとして捉え、開示テキストから測定する新手法を提供する。

🏢実務担当者:投資家対話での詳細な回答と誠実なトーンがグリーンウォッシング回避に有効であることを示す。

🏛政策担当者:対話型開示の質を高める制度設計が、シンボリックな環境対応を抑止しうる点に留意すべき。

As climate risks intensify, investors increasingly incorporate climate considerations into capital market decisions, making investor climate concern an important external governance force. However, prior research offers conflicting views on whether such concern disciplines firms toward substantive environmental action or incentivizes symbolic responses such as greenwashing. Existing studies mainly emphasize regulatory pressure or media scrutiny and pay limited attention to investor-driven governance in interactive disclosure settings. Our study aims to examine whether and how investor climate concern induces corporate greenwashing, and to clarify the governance mechanisms and boundary conditions through which investor scrutiny shapes firms' environmental disclosure strategies. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2022, we investigate the impact of investor climate concern on corporate greenwashing. The primary dataset is drawn from the textual content of question-and-answer sessions at earnings communication conferences, which include discussions on climate change, green development, and environmental disclosure strategies. The results show that firms are more likely to engage in greenwashing when the level of investor climate concern is higher, particularly when such concern focuses on pollution control, ecological protection, energy efficiency and low-carbon development. Executive green awareness serves as a mediating factor in this relationship. Further analysis shows that the structural content of investor climate concern, the frequency of investor–management interactions, and the tone of investor questions all significantly influence corporate behavior. Specifically, broader investor concern, more detailed managerial responses, and a more negative tone in investor questioning are each associated with a lower likelihood of greenwashing. The effect of investor climate concern on corporate greenwashing is particularly pronounced among firms in non-heavy-polluting industries, non-asset-intensive firms, firms with higher-quality environmental disclosure, and firms with lower levels of earnings management. Moreover, stronger internal governance mechanisms can effectively suppress greenwashing behavior under the pressure of investor climate concern. Our study extends the greenwashing literature by introducing investor climate concern as a distinct external governance force shaping firms' environmental disclosure strategies, complementing the existing focus on regulation, media scrutiny, and market discipline. It broadens the investor attention literature by moving beyond asset pricing and market reactions to examine micro-level behavioral consequences for corporate environmental conduct. By leveraging interactive question-and-answer texts from earnings communication conferences, the study offers a novel, real-time measure of investor climate concern, providing a sharper lens through which to capture investor pressure and its governance implications.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmf-12-2025-0665first seen 2026-10-04 05:23:09 · last seen 2026-10-06 05:43:47