Identifying greenwashing in corporate‐social responsibility reports using natural‐language processing
通过对企业社会责任报告进行文本分析，发现环境违规企业发布的报告更长、更正面、更频繁，但可读性更差，表明其利用未受监管的报告进行绿色洗白。
Abstract A textual analysis of corporate‐social responsibility (CSR) reports reveals that companies engaged in environmental violations report differently from firms with a clean record. The violators issue longer, more positive and more frequent reports to relay environmental content that is more copious but less readable. The violator firms appear to modify their reporting practices right after committing a violation. The findings suggest that culpable firms exploit the current unregulated–unaudited state of CSR reporting as a means of greenwashing and call for institutional change. Our results are robust to a number of industry‐firm characteristics, including board composition, ownership dispersion and international presence.