Badingatus Solikhah, Ching-Lung Chen, Pei-Yu Weng
Greenwashing undermines the credibility of ESG practices, decreases stakeholder trust, and distorts market perceptions of corporate responsibility. This study examines how governance strength, financial pressure, and family control influence ESG reporting biases. The results show that strong governance—both in performance and commitment—strongly reduces greenwashing. High short-term financing risk increases greenwashing, while family-controlled firms are less likely to engage in such practices. Additional analyses distinguish between overstatement and understatement and explore differences across environmentally sensitive industries (ESI) and non-ESI firms. Governance quality mitigates overstatement-driven greenwashing in ESI firms, whereas financial pressure amplifies it in non-ESI firms. In contrast, ESG understatement displays distinct dynamics, indicating different strategic motivations. The findings are robust across model specifications and offer practical implications for regulators to enhance ESG disclosure standards, develop benchmarking practices and design targeted oversight mechanisms, particularly in markets dominated by family-owned firms. © 2026 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Department of Accounting, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Semarang, Indonesia; Department of Accounting, National Yunlin University of Science & Technology, Douliu, Taiwan
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