Commitment to sustainability or marketing strategy to increase profits? A preliminary analysis of startup practices in Argentina's AgTech sector

We study how Argentine AgTech startups communicate sustainability on their websites and whether misalignment between symbolic and substantive actions (“greenwashing”) relates to their economic performance. We code web disclosures into symbolic and substantive actions, construct firm-level scores for each dimension, and combine them into a greenwashing measure. Using interval regressions for revenues and probit models for foreign-market concentration, we find that greenwashing is negatively and significantly associated with revenues: customers appear to penalize symbolic claims that are not backed by substantive actions. Indeed, decomposition analysis shows that greater symbolic communication reduces revenues, whereas declared substantive actions have no statistically discernible effect. On the other hand, the relationship between the revenues and the level of greenwashing is non-linear—small amounts of greenwashing induce positive effects on revenues but these turn negative as greenwashing rises—and is heterogeneous by firm age: younger startups are more strongly penalized, consistent with reputational mechanisms. By contrast, stronger symbolic communication increases the likelihood that AgTech firms concentrate sales in foreign markets. Overall, the results underscore the economic costs of misaligned sustainability communication and the value of credible, action-based disclosure.