IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/tefoso/v218y2025ics0040162525002410.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Managerial myopia, technological innovation, and greenwashing: Moderating roles of financing constraints and environmental uncertainty

Author

Listed:
  • Zhao, Jiyang
  • Wang, Xiaohong

Abstract

With growing concerns about the issue of greenwashing, it has been increasingly deemed critical to investigate the antecedents of greenwashing. This study employs the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) to construct managerial myopia and examine its effect on greenwashing as well as the influence mechanism by using a dataset with 7428 observations from 2012 to 2022. This study demonstrates that firms exhibiting a higher level of managerial myopia are more inclined to engage in greenwashing practices, which can be mediated by technological innovation. In addition, this study also corroborates that financing constraints and environmental uncertainty can reinforce the positive influences of managerial myopia on greenwashing. The results also indicate that the effects of managerial myopia on greenwashing are more pronounced among firms in recession stage and those with high levels of pollution. These findings can help identify the antecedents of greenwashing and inhibit firms from engaging in such practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhao, Jiyang & Wang, Xiaohong, 2025. "Managerial myopia, technological innovation, and greenwashing: Moderating roles of financing constraints and environmental uncertainty," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:218:y:2025:i:c:s0040162525002410
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2025.124210
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162525002410
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.techfore.2025.124210?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sheng, Xin & Guo, Songlin & Chang, Xiaochen, 2022. "Managerial myopia and firm productivity: Evidence from China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    2. Xiaowei Ma & Wanwan Ma & Xin Zhao & Xiaoxiao Zhou & Kamel Si Mohammed, 2024. "Increasing Burdens or Reducing Costs: Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility on Cost Stickiness," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(1), pages 2136-2155, March.
    3. Ding, Hui & Jiang, Fuwei & Zhang, Shan & Zhang, Zhining, 2024. "Managerial myopia and corporate social responsibility：Evidence from the textual analysis of Chinese earnings communication conferences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    4. Yaoqin Li & Xixiong Xu & Yushu Zhu & Mamiza Haq, 2021. "CEO decision horizon and corporate R&D investments: an explanation based on managerial myopia and risk aversion," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(4), pages 5141-5175, December.
    5. Nguyen, Lily & Vu, Le & Yin, Xiangkang, 2020. "The undesirable effect of audit quality: Evidence from firm innovation," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    6. Meilin Zhao & Xiaohong Wang & Shaopeng Zhang & Lei Cheng, 2024. "Business strategy and environmental information disclosure from a Confucian cultural perspective: Evidence from China," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 1557-1577, March.
    7. Chang, Xin & Fu, Kangkang & Low, Angie & Zhang, Wenrui, 2015. "Non-executive employee stock options and corporate innovation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 168-188.
    8. Xie, Xuejing & Gong, Yukai & Cheng, Le, 2025. "Managerial myopia and carbon emission: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    9. Francois Brochet & Maria Loumioti & George Serafeim, 2015. "Speaking of the short-term: disclosure horizon and managerial myopia," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 1122-1163, September.
    10. Chen, Lifeng & Khurram, Muhammad Usman & Gao, Yuying & Abedin, Mohammad Zoynul & Lucey, Brian, 2023. "ESG disclosure and technological innovation capabilities of the Chinese listed companies," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    11. Rong Ma & Yaqun Yi, 2024. "Managerial negative interpretation and environmental CSR: Evidence from China," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 41(4), pages 2437-2470, December.
    12. Liao, Feimei & Sun, Yinghao & Xu, Shulin, 2023. "Financial report comment letters and greenwashing in environmental, social and governance disclosures: Evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(PB).
    13. Zhang, Dongyang, 2022. "Environmental regulation and firm product quality improvement: How does the greenwashing response?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    14. Charles J. Hadlock & Joshua R. Pierce, 2010. "New Evidence on Measuring Financial Constraints: Moving Beyond the KZ Index," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(5), pages 1909-1940.
    15. Fisman, Raymond & Svensson, Jakob, 2007. "Are corruption and taxation really harmful to growth? Firm level evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 63-75, May.
    16. Liu, Hongxun & Zhang, Zihan, 2023. "The impact of managerial myopia on environmental, social and governance (ESG) engagement: Evidence from Chinese firms," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    17. Jiao, Anqi & Lu, Juntai & Ren, Honglin & Wei, Jia, 2024. "The role of AI capabilities in environmental management: Evidence from USA firms," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    18. Lu, Juan & Li, He & Yang, Ran, 2024. "Low carbon finance drives corporate carbon emissions reduction: A perspective from issuing carbon neutral bonds," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    19. Wu, Zhanchi & Fan, Xiangjun & Zhu, Bangzhu & Xia, Jiahui & Zhang, Lin & Wang, Ping, 2022. "Do government subsidies improve innovation investment for new energy firms: A quasi-natural experiment of China's listed companies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    20. Xie, Jiayue & Chen, Lu & Liu, Yan & Wang, Shengnan, 2023. "Does fintech inhibit corporate greenwashing behavior?-Evidence from China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(PB).
    21. Zhou, Kuo & Qu, Zhi & Wei, Zhixuan & Zhao, Jiyang, 2023. "Does government fiscal pressure matter for firm environmental performance? The role of environmental regulation and tax competition," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1187-1204.
    22. Alexander, Anna & De Vito, Antonio & Menicacci, Luca, 2024. "At what cost? Environmental regulation and corporate cash holdings," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    23. Chai Bin‐Feng & Sultan Sikandar Mirza & Tanveer Ahsan & Muhammad Azeem Qureshi, 2024. "How uncertainty can determine corporate ESG performance?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(3), pages 2290-2310, May.
    24. Hwan Joo Seo & Sung Jin Kang & Yong Jun Baek, 2020. "Managerial myopia and short-termism of innovation strategy: Financialisation of Korean firms," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 44(6), pages 1197-1220.
    25. Christopher Marquis & Michael W. Toffel & Yanhua Zhou, 2016. "Scrutiny, Norms, and Selective Disclosure: A Global Study of Greenwashing," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(2), pages 483-504, April.
    26. Sun, Yuan & Wen, YouYun & Jiang, Senyang & Zhang, Haoxiang, 2024. "The ripple effect of environmental shareholder activism and corporate green innovation: Evidence from Chinese listed companies," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    27. Lee, Gilsoo & Cho, Sam Yul & Arthurs, Jonathan & Lee, Eun Kyung, 2020. "Celebrity CEO, identity threat, and impression management: Impact of celebrity status on corporate social responsibility," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 69-84.
    28. Xu, Yong & Li, Shanshan & Zhou, Xiaoxiao & Shahzad, Umer & Zhao, Xin, 2022. "How environmental regulations affect the development of green finance: Recent evidence from polluting firms in China," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 917-926.
    29. Ghosh, Dipankar & Olsen, Lori, 2009. "Environmental uncertainty and managers' use of discretionary accruals," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 188-205, February.
    30. Hyeong Joon Kim & Seongjae Mun & Seung Hun Han, 2023. "Corporate social responsibility and the alignment of CEO and shareholders wealth: Does a strong alignment induce or restrain CSR?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(2), pages 720-741, March.
    31. Rachelle C. Sampson & Yuan Shi, 2023. "Are U.S. firms becoming more short‐term oriented? Evidence of shifting firm time horizons from implied discount rates, 1980–2013," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 231-263, January.
    32. Li Dong & Jinlong Chen & Huiling Guo, 2024. "Managerial myopia and outward foreign direct investment: Evidence from Chinese listed firms," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 45(2), pages 1026-1042, March.
    33. Li, Lixu & Zhu, Wenwen & Wei, Long & Liu, Yaoqi & Jiang, Nan, 2025. "Digital technology-enabled carbon-neutral management: A mechanism of supply chain digitalization in carbon performance," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    34. Hu, Shuo & Wang, Ailun & Du, Kerui, 2023. "Environmental tax reform and greenwashing: Evidence from Chinese listed companies," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    35. Zhang, Dongyang, 2023. "Subsidy expiration and greenwashing decision: Is there a role of bankruptcy risk?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    36. Bendig, David & Schulz, Colin & Theis, Lukas & Raff, Stefan, 2023. "Digital orientation and environmental performance in times of technological change," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    37. Tan, Xue & Yu, Lin & Fung, Hung-Gay, 2022. "Firms with short-termism: Evidence from expatriate controlling shareholders," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yin, Lei & Yang, Yuanyuan, 2024. "How does digital finance influence corporate greenwashing behavior?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(PB), pages 359-373.
    2. Xue, Kunkun & Chen, Xiaoxiao & Sun, Peipei & Li, Yongqing, 2024. "Supply chain network centrality and corporate greenwashing behavior," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    3. Song, Zenglu & Lu, Jinjing & Xu, Xinkuo, 2025. "Virtue over Deception: Confucian Culture and Corporate Greenwashing Behavior," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1569-1591.
    4. Xiong, Jiacai & Yang, Zelin & Wang, Qing Sophie, 2025. "Can non-punitive regulation curb corporate greenwashing?Evidence from a word embedding model," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    5. Wang, Yuxi & Hu, Fangjia & Wang, Yunyun, 2024. "Analyst coverage and greenwashing: Evidence from Chinese A-Share listed corporations," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    6. Li, Weiping & Mao, Zhuowei & Ren, Xiaohang & Liang, Jing, 2025. "Retail investor attention: Guardian of corporate ESG integrity or catalyst for greenwashing?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    7. Bai, Caiquan & Yao, Di & Xue, Qihang, 2025. "Does artificial intelligence suppress firms' greenwashing behavior? Evidence from robot adoption in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    8. Jin, Xuanxuan & Qi, Hanying & Huang, Xin, 2024. "Green financial regulation and corporate strategic ESG behavior: Evidence from China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    9. Zhao, Yinghan & Qu, Xiaoyu & Lucey, Brian, 2025. "Managerial myopia and biodiversity alignment- evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    10. Pengyu Chen & Zhongzhu Chu, 2024. "Mere facade? Is greenwashing behaviour lower in low‐carbon corporates?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(5), pages 4162-4174, July.
    11. Huang, Xiaowu & Li, Renzhi & Chen, Xingyu, 2025. "Does the green finance policy motivate firms to greenwash? A quasi-natural experiment based on the "Green finance reform innovation pilot zones"," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    12. Qian, Shuitu & Yang, Zhenyu & Yang, Lingxiao & Zhang, Yun, 2025. "Institutional investors’ green attention and corporate greenwashing: The effectiveness of external governance," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 2192-2206.
    13. Liu, Guangrui & Fang, Ying & Qian, Hao & Ding, Zhigang & Zhang, Alex & Zhang, Songlin, 2025. "Incentive or catering effect of environmental subsidies? Evidence from ESG reports on greenwashing," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    14. Li, Weiping & Shi, Chang & Xiao, Zhongyi & Zhang, Xuezhi, 2024. "Bridging the green gap: How digital financial inclusion affects corporate ESG greenwashing," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(PA).
    15. Tian Luan, 2024. "A Review of Corporate Social Responsibility Decoupling and Its Impact: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-17, May.
    16. Jianjun Sun & Nannan Zu & Chao Zhang, 2025. "Big data and firm greenwashing: evidence from China’s national big data comprehensive pilot zone," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    17. Zhang, Xiu-e & Li, Na, 2024. "Management myopia and corporate innovation in China: Focus on the moderating role of equity incentives," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 96(PB).
    18. Huisu Lai & Lei Quan & Fei Wu & Song Tang & Chong Guo & Xiaobing Lai, 2025. "Corporate environmental publicity and green innovation: are words consistent with actions?," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-14, December.
    19. Liu, Changyu & Gong, Wanrong & Dong, Guanglong & Ji, Qiang, 2024. "Regulation of environmental, social and governance disclosure greenwashing behaviors considering the risk preference of enterprises," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    20. Zhang, Mengzhi & He, Wenjian, 2025. "Encouraging or inhibiting: Can analyst attention reduce corporate greenwashing behavior?," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 943-962.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:218:y:2025:i:c:s0040162525002410. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00401625 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.