Greenwashing as a Corporate Strategy: A Bibliometric Analysis of Risks, Governance, and Heterogeneity

Abstract

The persistence of greenwashing as a strategic corporate behavior reflects a financial tradeoff between risk and return. Current literature lacks an integrative framework explaining how these risks and institutional arrangements vary across distinct contexts. This study maps the intellectual structure and contextual heterogeneity of corporate greenwashing research through a bibliometric analysis of 818 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 2000 to 2025. The results indicate an evolutionary shift in research focus from early ethical and reputational debates toward empirical investigations of capital market consequences, ESG controversies, and the dark side of corporate sustainability. This transition is accompanied by thematic movement from voluntary disclosure and legitimacy concerns toward mandatory compliance, sustainable finance, green bond pricing, and digital detection using artificial intelligence and natural language processing. The analysis reveals substantial structural heterogeneity. Heavy-asset industries are closely associated with technological decoupling under physical and compliance constraints, whereas financial and service sectors rely heavily on information asymmetry, green label arbitrage, and greenhushing. These sectoral patterns intersect with regional governance trajectories shaped by market-driven, regulation-oriented, and state-led contexts, generating distinct incentive structures and risk conditions, while firm-level governance further moderates these behaviors. The findings position greenwashing as a context-dependent corporate strategy and provide a structured synthesis for future research and differentiated regulatory responses.

1. Introduction

The global paradigm of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has shifted from voluntary philanthropy to standardized Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks, positioning sustainability performance as a core metric for assessing corporate legitimacy and long-term value (Tan et al., 2025; Zervoudi et al., 2025). The institutional imperative for a credible ESG image has simultaneously created financial incentives for firms to engage in greenwashing, generating a complex risk-return tradeoff that can influence asset pricing, investor perceptions, and the integrity of sustainable finance instruments (Baldi & Pandimiglio, 2022; De Silva Lokuwaduge & De Silva, 2022; Gregory, 2023).

Greenwashing is commonly understood as the strategic decoupling of symbolic communication from substantive environmental action (Walker & Wan, 2012). It erodes stakeholder trust (Guo et al., 2017) and distorts resource allocation in capital markets (Walker & Wan, 2012). Increasingly, scholars are examining this behavior as part of the dark side of corporate sustainability (Brinette et al., 2026). When symbolic green claims are exposed, they can trigger ESG controversies that lead to significant market penalties, including heightened market volatility and inflated financing costs. Despite these risks, greenwashing strategies remain prevalent, suggesting that firms often adopt greenwashing as a rational financial decision, balancing expected short-term returns against discovery risks.

Current scholarship examines greenwashing through multiple definitions. These include selective disclosure (Lyon & Maxwell, 2011), deceptive manipulation (De Freitas Netto et al., 2020), and misrepresentation at both the firm and product levels (Torelli et al., 2020). Recent conceptual work has also developed firm-level frameworks for identifying and measuring greenwashing (Dorfleitner & Utz, 2024). Multi-layered drivers include external pressures such as regulation, market competition, and stakeholder scrutiny (Lyon & Montgomery, 2015; Yang et al., 2020), alongside internal determinants like financial constraints, executive characteristics, and organizational resources (Y. Liu et al., 2023). To explain these motivations, researchers have primarily drawn on agency theory to examine managerial opportunism under information asymmetry, legitimacy theory to interpret defensive symbolic actions, and signaling theory to analyze capital market communication (Lyon & Maxwell, 2011; Pope & Wæraas, 2016; Testa et al., 2018a). Methodologically, studies have relied on content analysis (Z. Huang et al., 2025), decoupling measurements (Lublóy et al., 2025), and more recently, artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) methods to detect semantic ambiguity in sustainability disclosures (Moodaley & Telukdarie, 2023; Zhao et al., 2023).

Despite rapid growth, the literature remains fragmented. Existing reviews have examined greenwashing from several perspectives. These include industry-specific analyses in fashion (Alizadeh et al., 2024; Badhwar et al., 2024) and banking (Galletta et al., 2024), as well as reviews of methodological measurement issues (Bernini et al., 2024; Lublóy et al., 2025). Studies have also addressed stakeholder-related effects (Santos et al., 2024), general bibliometric patterns and hotspot evolution (Gupta & Singh, 2024; Pendse et al., 2023; W. Wang et al., 2023), and the conceptual and theoretical foundations of greenwashing in business and management (Forliano et al., 2025). While these studies have significantly improved understanding of the field, prior bibliometric analyses and reviews have focused mainly on publication trends, thematic clusters, and selected subdomains, offering limited insight into how greenwashing mechanisms vary across sectors, governance environments, and institutional settings.

In parallel, recent systematic reviews in the broader ESG literature have mainly examined substantive ESG implementation and its positive associations with firm performance and risk mitigation (Adardour et al., 2026; Ed-Dafali et al., 2025, 2026). By comparison, less attention has been paid to the strategic deception, ESG controversies, and governance risks associated with greenwashing. This separation leaves the literature without a structured synthesis that integrates sectoral, regional, and institutional variations into a coherent understanding of greenwashing as a context-dependent corporate strategy. Existing evidence indicates that the forms and focal risks of greenwashing vary substantially across contexts, ranging from symbolic, disclosure-oriented practices in the financial sector (Galletta et al., 2024; Zharfpeykan, 2021) to substantive compliance issues in high-polluting industries (Testa et al., 2018a). Furthermore, cross-national institutional settings and unique industry characteristics shape the incentives and manifestations of these deceptive claims (Alizadeh et al., 2024; Badhwar et al., 2024; Roulet & Touboul, 2015; Yang et al., 2020). Accordingly, a comprehensive framework that connects risk, governance, and contextual heterogeneity across sectors and regions remains to be developed.

Addressing this gap is essential to understanding greenwashing as a corporate strategy. Given that greenwashing manifests differently across institutional contexts, a broader structural analysis is needed to explain its evolution, identify dominant theoretical streams, and clarify how heterogeneous patterns are structured across sectors and regions. It is also necessary to operationalize this heterogeneity by identifying how mechanisms of decoupling differ across industries and regions. Against this background, this study employs bibliometric analysis combined with systematic theoretical synthesis to map the evolution, intellectual structure, and contextual heterogeneity of corporate greenwashing research.

The research questions (RQs) are as follows:

RQ1: How has the global scientific landscape of corporate greenwashing evolved in terms of production, collaboration, and thematic focus with attention to financial risks and governance?

RQ2: What are the dominant thematic structures, and how have research hotspots shifted in response to regulatory, technological, and financial pressures?

RQ3: How does the knowledge structure of greenwashing research exhibit structural heterogeneity across sectors and regions shaped by institutional logics and financial incentives?

By answering these questions, the study provides a structured mapping of the literature that highlights financial, governance, and contextual dimensions of greenwashing, offering insights for researchers, investors, and regulators seeking to understand ESG-related risks across sectors and countries.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Data Collection

This study utilized Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection as the primary data source, given its recognition as a premier database for scientometric analysis and cross-disciplinary comparisons (Ding & Yang, 2022; Merigó & Yang, 2017; Thelwall, 2008). While databases like Scopus or Google Scholar offer broader coverage, the exclusive focus on WoS ensures a high-quality, peer-reviewed dataset suitable for consistent bibliometric comparison. To accurately map the field’s evolution, the search targeted the term “greenwashing” and its variations using the query: TS = (“greenwash*” OR “green-wash*” OR “green wash*”). The search boundary ensured a conceptually homogeneous dataset focused on greenwashing as a corporate strategic behavior. For methodological transparency and reproducibility, all search parameters and extraction settings are detailed in

Table 1. Summary of data sources and selection.

Category	Specific Standard Requirements
Research database	Web of Science Core Collection
Citation indexes	SCI-Expanded, SSCI
Search field	Topic (TS)
Access date	20 October 2025
Searching period	All publications up to 20 October 2025
Language	“English”
Search query	TS = (“greenwash*” OR “green-wash*” OR “green wash*”)
Document types	Articles; Review Articles
Data extraction	Export with full records and cited references in plain text format
Sample size	818

Note: Summary of database filters and search parameters. Source: Authors’ elaboration.

. Accordingly, the inclusion criteria were restricted to English-language articles and review articles, thereby excluding non-research outputs such as meeting abstracts, editorials, and book reviews.

Following a PRISMA-guided protocol, the initial search yielded 1655 records. The step-by-step selection and exclusion process is mapped in Figure 1. After initial filtering, the remaining entries underwent manual screening of titles, abstracts, and full texts. To maintain a strict focus on greenwashing as a firm-level strategic behavior, studies were prioritized if they addressed managerial incentives, corporate disclosure practices, governance mechanisms, or related regulatory and financial outcomes. Records were excluded if they: (i) examined consumer purchase intentions without linking to corporate strategy or governance; (ii) analyzed environmental engineering techniques absent a financial or management perspective; or (iii) lacked empirical or theoretical relevance to firm-level behavior. Ultimately, a final sample of 818 publications was retained. The final dataset features 2092 authors from 1005 organizations across 71 countries, spans 221 journals, and includes 36,749 cited references, providing a solid empirical basis for the subsequent analysis.

2.2. Methodology

This study adopts bibliometrics as its core methodology to clarify how greenwashing has been studied as a corporate strategy across different governance, regulatory, and financial contexts. As a well-established quantitative approach, bibliometrics facilitates the evaluation of existing literature by transforming complex publication data into visual knowledge maps, thereby revealing structural characteristics and evolutionary patterns across stages of development (Abramo et al., 2011; Mayr & Scharnhorst, 2015). The analytical framework includes two complementary dimensions. Descriptive performance analysis evaluates the evolution of scientific production, identifying core journals, highly cited authors, and leading countries. Network mapping visualizes the conceptual and social structures of the field, employing co-word analysis for thematic clustering, co-citation analysis to trace intellectual foundations, and burst detection to capture temporal dynamics, paradigm shifts, and emerging research hotspots. Together, these approaches allow for a nuanced understanding of how greenwashing research varies across institutional, sectoral, and governance contexts.

The analysis utilized a complementary software suite consisting of CiteSpace (version 6.4.R1), VOSviewer (version 1.6.20), and the R package bibliometrix (version 5.1.0), thereby leveraging the distinct algorithmic strengths of each tool. To ensure methodological rigor and reproducibility, specific parameter settings and clustering criteria were established for each application. CiteSpace was used for temporal analysis, timeline visualization, and burst detection. It was configured with a one-year time slice and the Pathfinder network pruning algorithm to trace the evolution of knowledge clusters and research fronts (Chen, 2006). VOSviewer was employed to construct refined static network and density visualizations, using probability-based similarity algorithms to display collaboration networks and the strength of thematic associations (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010). For the network analysis, a minimum co-occurrence threshold of five was set for keywords, and the default clustering resolution was applied to group these keywords into distinct thematic modules, ensuring that visual clusters represent only the most statistically robust patterns. Bibliometrix was used to support data cleaning, descriptive statistics, and the broader integration of bibliometric results (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017). By combining these tools, the study ensures a comprehensive and methodologically robust mapping of the corporate greenwashing literature across disciplines, regions, and thematic domains.

3. Results

3.1. The Global Research Landscape

3.1.1. Analysis of Scientific Production

As shown in Figure 2, the analysis of 818 documents published between 2000 and 2025 suggests three evolutionary stages in corporate greenwashing research. Annual publication output increased markedly over the study period, with an exponential regression analysis (R² = 0.942) indicating a strong upward trend. The publication curve remains nearly flat before 2011, rises gradually from 2012 to 2019, and accelerates sharply after 2020.

The nascent period (2000–2011) witnessed minimal academic output, accounting for 1.22% of the total literature. During this period, foundational works primarily utilized signaling theory to conceptualize greenwashing as a deliberate corporate strategy designed to exploit information asymmetry between firms and consumers. Despite an annual publication volume of fewer than five articles, the citation count peaked at 2596 in 2011, indicating the emergence of highly influential foundational works. Early conceptualization was largely driven by public backlash against corporate environmental scandals, focusing on the widening gap between green marketing rhetoric and actual environmental reality (Vangeli et al., 2023). These pioneering studies distinguished greenwashing from general marketing misconduct, laying the theoretical groundwork for subsequent research.

The development period (2012–2019) was characterized by steady growth, contributing 9.06% to the cumulative research output. Annual publications increased from 7 in 2012 to 14 by 2019. Guided predominantly by legitimacy theory, research during this phase emphasized the role of symbolic environmental actions in defending firms’ social license to operate during major crises. Citation impact during this period was uneven, with 2015 standing out as a local peak. In the same year, the Paris Agreement was adopted, and the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal erupted. These developments heightened scholarly attention to the divergence between substantive and symbolic compliance by exposing the covert and complex nature of deceptive corporate tactics (Siano et al., 2017; Vangeli et al., 2023). Consequently, research during this period shifted from conceptual debates toward mechanism explanations and consequence evaluations.

The explosion period (2020–2025) marked an era of rapid expansion, dominating the field with 89.72% of all analyzed documents. Under increasingly stringent policy constraints and rising market pressure, greenwashing was discussed less as a reputational risk issue alone and more as a broader governance challenge associated with financial and legal consequences (Baldi & Pandimiglio, 2022; Bernini & La Rosa, 2024). In this period, scholars increasingly used agency theory to examine managerial opportunism, with particular attention to the manipulation of sustainability metrics for personal or short-term financial gain under conditions of weak oversight. The emergence of stringent disclosure regimes, such as the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and China’s Dual Carbon goals, has reshaped the regulatory and information landscape. This shift suggests that greenwashing has become increasingly associated with capital market pricing, compliance liabilities, and legal risks (Busch, 2023; G. Zhang, 2023). Citation impact reached a historical peak of 4592 in 2023, indicating that greenwashing has become an increasingly visible and influential topic within broader social science research (Bernini & La Rosa, 2024). Overall, the three-stage pattern reflects a progression from an early formative stage centered on conceptual development to a period of steady growth and, subsequently, rapid expansion, with increasing attention to governance, finance, and regulation.

3.1.2. Disciplinary Intersections

The distribution of research categories reveals the highly multidisciplinary nature of corporate greenwashing research. Dominant classifications encompass Environmental Studies (28.4%), Business (25.7%), Environmental Sciences (24.1%), Green Sustainable Science Technology (21.6%), and Management (20.3%). Notably, 62.6% of the literature across these top five categories exhibits multidisciplinary traits, indicating that addressing greenwashing effectively requires a synergy of technical measurement, legal regulation, and strategic management. The intellectual boundaries of the field have evolved significantly from early debates on marketing and business ethics. Contemporary research increasingly encompasses accounting perspectives on disclosure manipulation, financial assessments of green finance pricing, and evaluations of regulatory consequences (Christensen et al., 2021). This disciplinary expansion reflects the structural heterogeneity of the field, with greenwashing mechanisms taking different forms when examined from the perspective of environmental compliance or financial market scrutiny.

Based on Bradford’s Law of Scattering, the source distribution visualized in Figure 3 reveals a core-periphery structure, with publications concentrated in a relatively small set of core interdisciplinary outlets. The dense gray core zone illustrates that while greenwashing affects diverse economic sectors, the main publication venues remain concentrated in sustainability, environmental management, and finance-related journals.

Table 2. Top 10 most influential journals in corporate greenwashing research.

Rank	Source	h-Index	TC	N	IF	PY
1	Business Strategy and the Environment	23	2015	45	13.3	2015
2	Journal of Business Ethics	20	4524	27	6.7	2003
3	Journal of Cleaner Production	19	1456	38	10.0	2014
4	Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management	18	1303	44	9.1	2016
5	Energy Economics	15	1229	20	14.2	2022
6	Finance Research Letters	14	787	46	6.9	2021
7	Sustainability	13	827	68	3.3	2019
8	International Review of Financial Analysis	12	1067	31	9.8	2021
9	Environment Development and Sustainability	9	374	24	4.2	2022
10	Journal of Environmental Management	9	336	24	8.4	2020

Note: Ranked by h-index. TC: Total Citations, N: Number of publications, IF: Impact Factor, PY: Year of first publication. Source: Bibliometrix R-tool.

details the top 10 journals among the 221 sources, displaying a structural stratification driven by academic prestige and impact factors. Business Strategy and the Environment occupies the leading position, establishing itself as a leading outlet for high-quality research with an h-index of 23 and an impact factor of 13.3.

A historical analysis of journal evolution further reveals distinct positions among key venues. The FT50-listed Journal of Business Ethics, despite a lower publication volume, holds the highest total citation count of 4524, reinforcing its role as a foundational theoretical hub for mechanism-oriented research. In contrast, broad-scope journals such as Sustainability exhibit the highest productivity (N = 68), functioning as important platforms for the rapid cross-disciplinary dissemination of diverse empirical evidence and policy implications. Furthermore, the recent emergence of Finance Research Letters and Energy Economics in the top rankings suggests a growing thematic overlap with finance and economics. This shift indicates that the academic focus has transitioned from viewing greenwashing as a mere marketing facade to recognizing it as an agency problem that distorts capital market outcomes and exacerbates financial risk.

3.2. Collaboration and Social Structure

3.2.1. Geographic Distribution

Figure 4 presents the spatial distribution of knowledge production by integrating publication volume with network connectivity. China dominates the global research landscape with 380 publications, significantly surpassing the United States (74) and Italy (46). However, as illustrated in Figure 4a, the composition of this output reveals marked cross-national differences in collaboration structure. Research in China exhibits high domestic reliance, with single-country publications (SCP) accounting for 83.4% of its total output. Conversely, the United Kingdom demonstrates a collaborative pattern driven by international integration, where multiple-country publications (MCP = 26) exceed domestic ones (SCP = 16).

The network visualization (Figure 4b) illustrates cooperative dynamics through three distinct clusters that reflect differing macro-regulatory environments. The red cluster, centered on China, connects with several European partners, such as France and Italy. The green cluster, anchored by the United States, is linked to Australia, India, Malaysia, and South Korea. Within this cluster, greenwashing is primarily examined through the lens of signaling theory, with particular attention to information asymmetry, investor scrutiny, and capital market responses (Kim & Lyon, 2015; Lyon & Maxwell, 2011). The blue cluster, comprising central and northern European countries such as Germany and Finland, is strongly associated with normative compliance and mandatory reporting regimes such as the SFDR. This topological separation indicates that distinct collaborative networks have formed around trans-regional partnerships and regionally specific regulatory and market challenges, leading to a geographically segmented global discourse.

3.2.2. Academic Communities

Figure 5 reveals a fragmented intellectual structure shaped by both geographic and thematic clustering. The high-impact green cluster, anchored by Lyon, T.P. and Montgomery, A.W., represents the North American academic community. As indicated in

Table 3. Top 10 most influential authors in the corporate greenwashing field.

Rank	Author	Affiliation	h-Index	TC	N	PY
1	Zhang, D.Y.	Capital University of Economics and Business, China	11	1348	13	2022
2	Lyon, T.P.	University of Michigan, USA	6	2504	6	2011
3	Sun, Z.Y.	China University of Mining and Technology, China	5	301	5	2019
4	Bilan, Y.	Rzeszow University of Technology, Poland	4	166	4	2020
5	Boiral, O.	Université Laval, Canada	4	488	6	2018
6	Chen, P.Y.	Dankook University, South Korea	4	190	4	2023
7	Du, X.Q.	Xiamen University, China	4	550	5	2015
8	Font, X.	University of Surrey, UK	4	393	4	2011
9	Montgomery, A.W.	Western University (Ivey Business School), Canada	4	1099	5	2013
10	Dagestani, A.	Central South University, China	3	179	3	2023

Note: Ranked by h-index. TC: Total Citations; N: Number of publications; PY: Year of first publication. Source: CiteSpace.

, Lyon has the highest total citation count (2504). This cluster functions as the foundational theoretical hub, framing early greenwashing research through the lens of signaling and legitimacy. Their work primarily addresses symbolic green claims, stakeholder pressure, and legitimacy defense. In contrast, recent empirical expansion from China appears more fragmented. For instance, the blue cluster anchored by Sun, Z.Y. forms a cohesive local collaboration group, whereas Zhang, D.Y. appears as a large but comparatively weakly connected node. This structural configuration indicates that the empirical investigation of managerial opportunism and agency theory in emerging markets relies on localized, specialized research groups.

Complementing these dominant geographic blocs are several specialized niche communities. For instance, the yellow cluster led by Boiral, O. primarily investigates the decoupling mechanisms of symbolic management and certification standards. Meanwhile, the teal cluster, connecting Bilan, Y. and Chen, P.Y., highlights a relatively limited yet representative case of cross-border collaboration. The overall network topology, as evidenced by the distinct subnetworks in Figure 5, suggests limited integration across author communities. This structural separation indicates that corporate greenwashing research currently operates through largely disconnected, region-specific academic communities. Overcoming this fragmentation through cross-institutional collaboration remains a critical necessity for developing a globally integrated framework.

3.3. Intellectual Structure

The author co-citation network maps the intellectual structure formed by influential scholars and foundational references. Overall, Figure 6 maps the main theoretical streams structuring the field, whereas

Table 4. Top 20 papers with the strongest citation bursts on corporate greenwashing.

Strength	Start	End	2000–2025 (Burst)	Author (Year)	Journal
7.43	2011	2016		Lyon and Maxwell (2011)	J. Econ. & Manage. Strat.
5.44	2015	2017		Walker and Wan (2012)	J. Bus. Ethics
4.11	2015	2016		Delmas and Burbano (2011)	Calif. Manage. Rev.
3.43	2015	2016		Lyon and Montgomery (2013)	J. Bus. Ethics
3.40	2015	2017		Bromley and Powell (2012)	Acad. Manage. Ann.
12.54	2017	2020		Lyon and Montgomery (2015)	Org. & Environ.
9.88	2017	2020		Marquis et al. (2016)	Org. Sci.
7.97	2018	2020		Du (2015)	J. Bus. Ethics
7.22	2018	2021		Berrone et al. (2017)	J. Bus. Ethics
5.97	2018	2020		Kim and Lyon (2015)	Org. Sci.
4.74	2018	2019		Nyilasy et al. (2014)	J. Bus. Ethics
11.99	2019	2023		Testa et al. (2018a)	Bus. Strat. & Environ.
9.72	2019	2022		Seele and Gatti (2017)	Bus. Strat. & Environ.
9.12	2019	2023		L. Zhang et al. (2018)	J. Clean. Prod.
14.14	2020	2025		Z. Sun and Zhang (2019)	J. Clean. Prod.
8.68	2020	2023		Testa et al. (2018b)	J. Bus. Ethics
4.83	2022	2023		De Freitas Netto et al. (2020)	Environ. Sci. Eur.
4.44	2022	2023		Yu et al. (2020)	Res. Int. Bus. Fin.
3.38	2022	2023		Y. Wu et al. (2020)	Manag. Sci.
4.96	2023	2025		Gatti et al. (2019)	Int. J. Corp. Soc. Resp.

Note: The light-blue line represents the period before the article was published, the dark-blue line denotes the period after publication, and the red segments indicate the duration of the citation burst for each influential work, highlighting periods in which specific references attracted intensified scholarly attention. Source: CiteSpace.

indicates a temporal shift from early studies centered on signaling and legitimacy to recent empirical work on agency conflicts and ESG-related financial risks.

The central yellow cluster represents the strategic signaling perspective. Anchored by Lyon, T.P. as the prominent node, this group connects closely with scholars such as Marquis, C., Testa, F., and Du, X.Q. Drawing on information economics, research within this domain conceptualizes greenwashing as a deliberate corporate behavior designed to exploit information asymmetry, wherein firms amplify positive environmental information while obfuscating negative performance to manipulate external perception. Lyon and Maxwell (2011) articulated the foundational argument that firms utilize selective disclosure to maximize market value under the threat of external scrutiny. Du (2015) extended this framework to emerging markets, examining how corporate governance factors, such as political connections, interact with strategic choices to mitigate legitimacy risks. The high centrality of this cluster underscores the role of signaling theory as a major lens for understanding the tension between firm transparency and market valuation.

Situated on the left, the blue cluster represents the institutional legitimacy stream. Headed by Delmas, M.A. and connecting closely with Clarkson, P.M. and Cho, C.H., this stream grounds greenwashing research in institutional theory and sociopolitical legitimacy, emphasizing the interaction between external institutional environments and organizational response strategies. The seminal work by Delmas and Burbano (2011) identified key drivers at both institutional and organizational levels, revealing that a lax regulatory environment combined with market pressure creates structural conditions that incentivize symbolic management over substantive action. As detailed in Table 4, the enduring impact of these foundational works is reflected in the high burst strengths of publications by Lyon, Delmas, and Walker, with citation bursts concentrated between 2011 and 2017. This indicates that the core conceptual constructs of the discipline were established over a decade ago and still inform current structural analyses of institutional decoupling.

The emerging empirical research front, represented by the red cluster on the right, is dominated by scholars such as Zhang, D.Y., Sun, Z.Y., and Yu, E.P.Y. This cluster reflects a methodological shift toward using large-sample corporate data to test the effectiveness of external governance mechanisms through the lens of agency theory. Table 4 shows that Sun’s work has the highest burst strength (14.14), underscoring its strong influence on recent research trends and debates over regulatory effectiveness. Specifically, Z. Sun and Zhang (2019) introduced evolutionary game theory to construct a dynamic model between government regulators and enterprises, simulating the generation and evolution mechanisms of greenwashing behaviors. Meanwhile, D. Zhang (2023) utilized panel data to examine how external pressures, particularly environmental regulations, curb deceptive practices. Furthermore, Yu et al. (2020) advanced the empirical measurement of this phenomenon by proposing a peer-relative quantitative method to evaluate the magnitude of firms’ greenwashing behaviors based on the divergence between their ESG disclosure and actual performance. By focusing on managerial opportunism, this cluster reveals how internal governance failures contribute to the persistence of deceptive reporting in emerging markets.

The green cluster at the bottom of the network represents the ESG and finance stream. Featuring scholars such as Flammer, C., this stream integrates traditional management theories with financial economics to investigate the capital market consequences of greenwashing, focusing on mechanisms such as asset pricing distortion and ESG rating divergence. Flammer’s investigation into corporate green bonds found that credible signaling of environmental commitment contributes to improved financial performance and long-term value (Flammer, 2021). This positive evidence has been complemented by growing research on the opposite side of the same problem, namely the financial penalties associated with ESG controversies and misleading sustainability claims. Recent studies show that exposure to greenwashing and unresolved ESG controversies can distort asset pricing and raise corporate financing costs by increasing risk perceptions among lenders and investors (Brinette et al., 2026). The formation of this cluster aligns with the recent growth of finance-oriented studies, suggesting that greenwashing is becoming increasingly relevant within corporate finance research.

Ultimately, the intellectual landscape of corporate greenwashing has expanded from conceptual definitions to the identification of governance mechanisms and the evaluation of financial consequences. While theoretical definition studies primarily burst around 2017, empirical research interest experienced an explosive surge from 2019 to 2025 (Table 4). This pattern suggests growing differentiation across theoretical streams, methodological approaches, and research priorities within the field. Future research could therefore move beyond identifying isolated mechanisms and improve comparability across theoretical frameworks and institutional contexts.

3.4. Research Hotspots and Thematic Evolution

Figure 7 visualizes the thematic co-occurrence network, highlighting several interconnected clusters with considerable thematic overlap. The blue cluster centered on “greenwashing” forms the main conceptual hub of the field. Its close connections with “information asymmetry”, “green innovation”, “environmental performance”, and “environmental regulation” suggest that the literature frequently examines greenwashing in connection with disclosure practices, environmental outcomes, and regulatory oversight. Large neighboring nodes such as “green innovation” and “environmental performance” indicate that these themes have become major empirical extensions of the core debate, while “information asymmetry” serves as a key bridge to disclosure-related concerns. Situated nearby, the purple cluster integrates “legitimacy theory”, “signaling theory”, “environmental disclosure”, “corporate governance”, and “decoupling”. The connectivity among these terms suggests that the literature is closely tied to legitimacy, signaling, and symbolic decoupling perspectives.

Figure 7 also highlights the growing financial and institutional dimension of the field. The red cluster in Figure 7, centered on “ESG”, “sustainable finance”, and “institutional investors”, suggests a shift from traditional business ethics toward the evaluation of capital market consequences and governance mechanisms. The prominent nodes of “sustainability” and “corporate social responsibility (csr)” indicate that greenwashing research remains strongly embedded in the broader sustainability and CSR literature, while the links among “ESG”, “financial performance”, and “institutional investors” point to growing attention to financing consequences, investor monitoring, and market responses. Recent literature linked to these keywords examines the “greenium” (Flammer, 2021) and investor responses to green bond issuance amidst greenwashing risks (Tang & Zhang, 2020) and the financing penalties associated with ESG controversies (Brinette et al., 2026), demonstrating that greenwashing governance is now closely associated with systemic financial risk and market oversight.

Figure 8 further illustrates the temporal evolution of these research paradigms. As mapped on the timeline, early research from 2000 to 2010 was highly concentrated on foundational nodes such as “information asymmetry”, “reputation”, and “risk”, reflecting an emphasis on symbolic management and legitimacy during the era of voluntary CSR. Entering the transitional phase from 2011 to 2019, the field experienced a structural shift. Initially, larger central nodes such as “corporate social responsibility” and “corporate governance” became dominant topics. This indicates that greenwashing was increasingly scrutinized as a systemic governance and legitimacy challenge, transcending its earlier perception as a public relations issue. To regulate and operationalize these corporate practices, the establishment of international reporting frameworks, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), as well as the global push for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), catalyzed a surge in accountability-driven research. The institutional pressure is reflected in the subsequent emergence and clustering of nodes such as “environmental disclosure” and “environmental performance” during this period.

Post-2020 research shows a clearer diversification of the field. Alongside technology-related terms such as “digital transformation” and “artificial intelligence”, nodes associated with “green finance”, “financial constraints”, “institutional investors”, “green bond”, “circular economy”, and “ESG greenwashing” become more visible in the later period. This thematic emergence indicates that traditional, manual regulatory verification struggles to detect increasingly sophisticated and heterogeneous data fabrication strategies. Literature explores the use of NLP and machine learning models, such as ClimateBERT, to identify semantic ambiguity and evasive expressions in ESG reports (Bingler et al., 2022). Concurrently, studies link “digital transformation” to improved internal controls and reduced monitoring costs (H. Li & Zhong, 2025). However, these automated approaches remain largely exploratory. As mapped in Figure 9, these technological themes currently reside in the lower-left quadrant, indicating that while AI-driven detection is a rapidly emerging hotspot, it has yet to develop a mature, highly centralized theoretical structure. The lack of comprehensively annotated datasets, combined with the sectoral and regional heterogeneity of corporate evasion strategies, constrains the ability of artificial intelligence to identify complex greenwashing patterns (Boedijanto & Delina, 2024). Overcoming restricted public access to proprietary models and improving algorithmic interpretability represent urgent methodological challenges for future scholars (X. Wang et al., 2025).

Figure 9 classifies these themes based on centrality and density metrics, assessing the maturity and influence of each research subfield from a systems perspective (Cobo et al., 2011). Motor themes in the upper-right quadrant, including “greenwashing”, “ESG”, and “sustainability”, exhibit high density and high centrality. This indicates that they have developed relatively mature theoretical structures and maintain intensive knowledge exchange with other subfields, acting as the foundational components of the discipline. Close to this core area, “CSR”, “climate change”, and “green marketing” lie near the boundary between motor and basic themes, showing that they remain important to the field but are less developed than the core motor themes.

In the upper-left quadrant, niche themes fall into two groupings. One includes “stakeholder theory”, “certification”, and “evolutionary game”, pointing to specialized theoretical and analytical discussions. The other includes “green bonds”, “corporate sustainability”, and “information asymmetry”, indicating a finance-oriented substream that is relatively well developed within the cluster but less central to the overall field.

In the lower-right quadrant, “circular economy”, “green innovation”, and “China” function as basic themes, suggesting that greenwashing research is increasingly embedded in broader debates on sustainability transition, firm innovation, and context-specific governance, especially in the Chinese setting.

Notably, technological themes such as “artificial intelligence” and “digital transformation” currently reside in the lower-left quadrant. This topological positioning indicates that while these topics are emerging hotspots, they have yet to develop a mature or highly centralized theoretical structure. The same quadrant also contains “sustainable finance”, “environmental performance”, “environmental disclosure”, and “impression management”, suggesting that several promising topics remain conceptually fragmented or are still developing. Taken together, the thematic evolution suggests a shift from early conceptual concerns toward a more diversified agenda involving governance, finance, disclosure, and technological detection.

4. Discussion

Contextual heterogeneity in this study is operationalized across three dimensions: sectoral, regional, and micro-level. Sectoral heterogeneity is identified through differences in the dominant themes linking greenwashing to industrial production, service activities, sustainable finance, and consumer-oriented communication. Regional heterogeneity is identified through country collaboration patterns, geographically concentrated research clusters, and the prominence of governance-related themes under different regulatory settings. Micro-level heterogeneity is identified through recurrent firm-level factors, especially ownership structure, executive characteristics, internal governance, and informal institutions. This three-dimensional interpretation is grounded in a dataset screened to retain studies linking greenwashing to corporate strategy, governance, disclosure practices, and related regulatory or financial outcomes. As a result, the discussion places primary emphasis on sectoral, regional, and micro-level patterns of firm behavior, while studies centered mainly on consumer purchase intentions, individual psychology, or purely technical applications remain outside the main interpretive focus. The following discussion develops an integrative synthesis based on the three dimensions.

4.1. Sectoral Divergence

The bibliometric network reveals distinct keyword clusters, indicating that greenwashing in heavy-asset sectors is more closely associated with green innovation, environmental performance, and environmental regulation, whereas in service and finance sectors it is more closely connected with ESG, sustainable finance, and institutional investors (Figure 7). Viewed through the lens of institutional theory, this structural division highlights meaningful differences in how greenwashing operates across industries, consistent with the disciplinary intersections observed in Section 3.1.2, where Environmental Studies, Business, and Management research intersect with finance and accounting to shape corporate ESG strategies. Although research interest is rising globally, the underlying deceptive mechanisms differ significantly based on asset materiality and technological complexity.

In heavy-asset sectors, greenwashing manifests as the strategic manipulation of R&D outputs (Z. Sun & Du, 2025). Moving beyond simple concealment, firms in these sectors face rigid physical limits regarding production processes and emissions, prompting a strategic trade-off between the quantity and quality of innovation to manage decarbonization costs (X. Huang et al., 2023; Meng et al., 2025). Grounded in agency theory, this form of technological decoupling is particularly prevalent in heavy industries where managers prioritize short-term compliance signals over substantive long-term investments. The Volkswagen emissions scandal illustrates this logic of innovation manipulation. Specifically, the installation of defeat devices in approximately 11 million vehicles worldwide allowed the firm to circumvent emissions tests while simultaneously marketing a purported breakthrough in clean diesel technology (Canis et al., 2016; Federal Trade Commission, 2016). This case exemplifies an important mechanism of industrial greenwashing, whereby firms create a gap between test compliance and actual emissions performance to reduce regulatory costs while preserving a green technological image (Canis et al., 2016; Lyon & Montgomery, 2015). Under capital-market and regulatory pressure, heavy industrial firms may increase patenting activity as a strategic signal while reducing the substantive quality of actual innovation (Y. Liu et al., 2025). This explains the crowding-out effect observed in the literature, where symbolic patenting competes for resources with substantive R&D. Similarly, green credit policies can distort the trajectory of green innovation. Evidence indicates a significant post-policy increase in green utility-model patents, with limited improvements in substantive invention patents (W. Li et al., 2024).

Complementing these technological strategies, the geographic distribution of heavy industry highlights the use of spatial strategies to manage environmental reputation (Figure 4). The phenomenon of pollution transfer aligns closely with the material decoupling observed in the secondary sector. Strict local environmental regulations and taxes may encourage heavy polluters to utilize green mergers and acquisitions to shift pollution activities across regions, functioning as a substitute for substantive emission reductions (D. Wang et al., 2025). Firms may relocate high-emission assets to jurisdictions with weaker enforcement, manipulating organizational boundaries to engage in regulatory arbitrage.

Consistent with the dominance of “ESG” keywords, service-oriented sectors, particularly finance and tourism, operate under a different logic of labeling arbitrage. Because these industries lack direct physical emissions, the mechanism of deception focuses primarily on capital classification. These sectoral patterns can be understood as dominant tendencies, as firms may combine multiple greenwashing strategies across different business contexts. In the banking industry, for instance, greenwashing manifests as a stark disconnect between lending portfolios and public commitments. Evidence indicates that major banks associated with net-zero commitments have continued to provide substantial financing to fossil-fuel-related activities, highlighting a persistent gap between public sustainability commitments and actual portfolio allocation (Rainforest Action Network et al., 2024). Similarly, the DWS case attracted regulatory scrutiny over possible overstatement of the ESG characteristics of certain investment products and the inconsistent integration of ESG criteria into the investment process (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2023). These behaviors reflect the structural patterns captured in Figure 7, where ESG, sustainability, sustainable finance, and institutional investors emerge as prominent nodes, demonstrating the convergence of information asymmetry and sector-specific practices in shaping greenwashing strategies (Galletta et al., 2024; Zharfpeykan, 2021). Crucially, the financial sector exposes the dark side of corporate sustainability. Once uncovered, these labeling arbitrages can trigger severe ESG controversies. As recent literature suggests, the exposure of such deceptive practices penalizes firms by significantly inflating their financing costs and distorting market pricing. This demonstrates that greenwashing in service and finance sectors extends beyond reputational damage, directly impacting systemic financial stability (Bernini & La Rosa, 2024; Brinette et al., 2026).

Consumer-facing industries exploit definitional ambiguity to facilitate greenwashing. This is exemplified by the conscious collections launched by fast fashion giants like H&M (Kaner, 2021). These campaigns utilize vague terminology, such as “eco-friendly”, without providing verifiable data regarding the percentage of recycled content (Savić & Frfulanović, 2024). A unique behavioral adaptation within the service sector is greenhushing, which stands in direct contrast to aggressive promotional tactics. Small tourism businesses often deliberately understate their sustainability practices to avoid the risk that customers might perceive a trade-off between environmental sustainability and service quality (Font et al., 2017). Unlike heavy industries that overstate performance to satisfy regulators, service firms understate actions to manage customer expectations and preserve competitive positioning.

4.2. Regional Divergence

Building on the regional clustering and thematic patterns identified in Section 3.2 and Section 3.4, and viewed through the lens of institutional theory, governance trajectories can be differentiated across market-driven, regulation-oriented, and state-led contexts. Institutional variation dictates the specific forms of legitimacy pressure firms face, thereby generating heterogeneous greenwashing responses. In market-driven contexts such as North America, the persistence of greenwashing suggests limitations in voluntary environmental governance mechanisms. Lacking direct government intervention, firms primarily rely on information asymmetry to manage their reputations, constrained largely by litigation risks and non-governmental organization (NGO) scrutiny. Within the voluntary disclosure framework, climate reporting often functions as a valuation tool through which capital markets assess climate-related risks, while actual decarbonization remains weakly enforced (Frisch, 2024). The institutional design gap allows corporations to decouple symbolic environmental communication from substantive operational changes. This pattern is consistent with the market-oriented cluster structure shown in Figure 4, where collaboration patterns suggest a strong emphasis on signaling and disclosure-based responses.

By contrast, the European context follows a different governance logic. The research cluster centered on central and northern European nations indicates that greenwashing governance in this region is undergoing a transition toward a mandatory regulatory model. Driven by the implementation of stringent environmental legislation, academic focus has transcended ethical debates, reframing greenwashing as a technical and legal compliance challenge (Busch, 2023). In this context, the standardization of the EU Taxonomy and the increasing rigor of reporting frameworks have become important tools for identifying and governing deceptive corporate behavior. Consequently, research originating from this region increasingly emphasizes the legal and financial repercussions of non-compliance, aligning with broader efforts to mitigate the dark side of corporate sustainability. This regional orientation is reflected in the collaborative configuration shown in Figure 4 and in the growing prominence of disclosure and governance themes in Section 3.4.

In emerging markets, however, the prominence of the Chinese cluster in the collaboration network suggests that greenwashing is strongly conditioned by state policy and resource allocation. In this context, the government plays a central role in resource distribution. To gain political legitimacy and secure subsidies or credit support, some firms may use greenwashing as a strategic means of resource acquisition. This dynamic generates a strategic alignment effect, whereby companies manipulate environmental data to align themselves superficially with national policy priorities. For instance, policies designed to liberalize capital markets can unintentionally incentivize greenwashing, as firms polish ESG reports to attract foreign investment without executing substantive organizational changes (G. Liu et al., 2024). Similarly, while policy pilots like green finance reform zones provide resource support, the immense pressure on firms to prove compliance for preferential loans often triggers strategic greenwashing behaviors (T. Wu, 2024). Parallel patterns emerge in mandatory low-carbon city pilots, where enterprises deploy symbolic rhetoric to satisfy the performance metrics of local governments (G. Zhang, 2023). Regional institutional variation is linked not only to differences in governance intensity, but also to differences in the financial incentives attached to green signaling and policy compliance. When these superficial alignments are exposed as greenwashing, firms face severe regulatory penalties and subsequent spikes in financing costs, highlighting the volatility of ESG controversies in state-led contexts.

To address these administrative challenges, emerging markets are increasingly exploring digital governance solutions. The recent prominence of burst terms such as “artificial intelligence” and “big data” reflects a paradigm shift in governance mechanisms, moving from traditional manual verification toward centralized digital enforcement. Implementing vertical management systems for environmental monitoring helps break the interest alignment and collusion between local governments and polluting firms (D. Zhang, 2023), while the construction of national big data pilot zones inhibits greenwashing at the source by enhancing information transparency (J. Sun et al., 2025). The rise of these governance tools is consistent with the post-2020 thematic evolution shown in Figure 8, where digital transformation and artificial intelligence emerge as increasingly visible research fronts.

Overall, the governance landscape of greenwashing appears to follow different regional trajectories. North America relies heavily on market-based adjustment, Europe is moving toward standardized legislative regulation, and emerging markets increasingly experiment with digitally enabled enforcement mechanisms. These differentiated trajectories reinforce the interpretation of heterogeneity advanced in this study, as greenwashing varies across different combinations of market incentives, regulatory pressure, and state capacity.

4.3. Micro-Level Heterogeneity

The bibliometric network analysis identifies a distinct cluster centered on corporate governance (Figure 7), reflecting the foundational role of internal control in greenwashing management. At the micro level, heterogeneity is interpreted through differences in ownership structure, executive traits, internal monitoring, and informal institutions. To deconstruct the theoretical logic within this high-density region, a qualitative synthesis of influential papers was performed to uncover the underlying mechanisms of corporate behavior. The stable presence of keywords such as “corporate governance”, “CSR”, and “executive characteristics” indicates that macro-level institutional pressures interact with micro-level firm structures and that their effects vary across firm-specific governance arrangements. Specifically, viewed through the lens of agency theory, the propensity to greenwash is shaped by ownership models and informal institutional environments. For example, state-owned enterprises experience intense political pressure to meet national environmental mandates, which can encourage symbolic greenwashing through promotion incentives when internal oversight is weak or inhibit it when state capital enforces stricter compliance (X. Li et al., 2025; Z. Li et al., 2023). When these internal governance failures lead to the exposure of ESG controversies, firms face severe market penalties, as lenders perceive such scandals as unethical behavior. Recent evidence suggests that the exposure of such deceptive practices significantly inflates corporate financing costs, including both the cost of debt and equity capital (Brinette et al., 2026).

Informal institutions and cultural contexts further influence firm behavior. Family culture significantly reduces deceptive green behaviors, as family firms are largely driven by the desire to preserve long-term socioemotional wealth and reputation (D. Zhang et al., 2024). Consequently, they exhibit a lower propensity for greenwashing compared to non-family counterparts. Confucian culture, with its emphasis on integrity, mitigates the tendency of overconfident chief executive officers (CEOs) to engage in greenwashing (D. Zhang & Cheng, 2025). Conversely, regional social trust can yield a mixed effect. Viewed through the lens of signaling theory, firms located in high-trust regions may opportunistically exploit trust to mask deceptive greenwashing activities, sending false signals to stakeholders to maintain corporate legitimacy (J. Wang & Ke, 2025).

Furthermore, consistent with upper echelons theory, the cognitive traits and backgrounds of top management teams can also shape greenwashing decisions. Managerial myopia can catalyze greenwashing, particularly under short-term investor pressure, as executives prioritize immediate compliance signals over substantive sustainability (Gao & Yin, 2025). Conversely, CEOs with formative experiences such as childhood poverty or foreign exposure are less likely to engage in deceptive practices, reflecting the influence of personal experience and liability of foreignness on ethical orientation and disclosure behavior (Song & Chen, 2025; Xu & Lyu, 2025).

Micro-level heterogeneity, therefore, indicates that even within similar sectoral and regulatory environments, differences in ownership structure, executive cognition, and internal governance can produce divergent greenwashing responses, ranging from substantive compliance to symbolic decoupling, and ultimately different levels of ESG controversy and financing risk.

4.4. Integrative Synthesis

Moving beyond a descriptive mapping of the literature, this study develops an integrative synthesis that conceptualizes corporate greenwashing as a heterogeneous phenomenon shaped by the complex interaction of macro-level institutional pressures, meso-level industry characteristics, and micro-level governance structures. Building on the theoretical and empirical insights discussed above, Figure 10 illustrates this synthesis, mapping how different greenwashing behaviors emerge across institutional contexts.

At the macro level, grounded in institutional theory, governance environments exert influence through three pathways: market-driven, regulation-oriented, and state-led mechanisms. These external pressures intersect with industry-specific attributes, revealing meaningful cross-sectoral heterogeneity where capital-intensive sectors are constrained by production limits and service-oriented sectors are characterized by intangible assets and high information asymmetry. These factors delineate the boundaries within which greenwashing occurs. Micro-level governance structures, including ownership type, executive traits, and internal incentives, further moderate these behaviors, functioning as critical internal mechanisms for firms to manage the systemic or specific exposures associated with ESG risks. The interplay of these factors produces four dominant behavioral paradigms: manipulation of R&D outputs or symbolic patenting, pollution transfer or regulatory arbitrage, green label arbitrage, and greenhushing.

This integrative synthesis provides a structured view of corporate greenwashing and clarifies how different institutional, sectoral, and firm-level conditions generate different forms of deception and different consequences, including ESG controversies and inflated financing costs. In this way, it offers a foundation for aligning corporate practices with SDGs and developing more targeted governance strategies. Furthermore, the synthesis guides future empirical investigation by identifying actionable research avenues, particularly the necessity of leveraging artificial intelligence for semantic detection to mitigate information opacity and curb environmental deception.

5. Conclusions

5.1. Summary of Research Findings

Through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 818 publications from 2000 to 2025, this study maps the evolutionary trajectory, intellectual structure, and heterogeneous patterns of corporate greenwashing research. The findings show that the field has evolved from early conceptual work to steady development and then to rapid expansion after 2020. Over time, the literature has moved beyond definitional debates toward stronger attention to disclosure, governance, finance, and digital detection. The results also indicate a multidisciplinary structure, with major contributions from environmental studies, business, management, and, increasingly, finance and economics. This shift suggests that greenwashing is treated not only as an ethical or reputational issue but also as a governance and financial risk concern.

The bibliometric evidence further reveals a differentiated knowledge structure. Research output remains geographically concentrated, while collaboration networks and co-citation patterns point to distinct regional and intellectual clusters. Strategic signaling, institutional legitimacy, empirical governance research, and ESG-finance studies emerge as the principal streams of the field. At the thematic level, the field is anchored in core themes related to greenwashing, ESG, and sustainability, while digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and sustainable finance have gained increasing prominence in recent years. These patterns indicate that greenwashing research has become methodologically more diverse and increasingly connected to questions of regulatory effectiveness and market consequences.

The study also reveals substantial heterogeneity in greenwashing practices across three dimensions. At the sectoral level, heavy-asset sectors are more closely associated with technological decoupling, symbolic patenting, and pollution transfer, whereas service-oriented and financial sectors are more strongly linked to green label arbitrage and greenhushing under conditions of high information asymmetry. At the regional level, market-driven, regulation-oriented, and state-led contexts generate different governance logics, incentives, and enforcement mechanisms. At the micro level, ownership structure, executive cognition, and informal institutions shape how firms respond to similar external pressures. Taken together, these findings support the view that greenwashing is a context-dependent corporate strategy linked to different governance conditions, financial incentives, and risk exposures.

5.2. Theoretical and Practical Implications

Theoretically, this research contributes by conceptualizing greenwashing as a context-dependent corporate strategy rather than a uniform phenomenon. It shows that greenwashing is shaped by the interaction of information asymmetry, legitimacy pressure, and agency conflicts under different institutional, sectoral, and firm-level conditions. In this sense, the study complements broader ESG reviews by focusing specifically on deceptive sustainability communication and the dark side of corporate sustainability, while organizing the literature into a more structured understanding of heterogeneity across sectoral, regional, and micro-level dimensions. This perspective indicates that greenwashing follows multiple mechanisms and produces different outcomes across contexts.

Practically, the findings suggest that anti-greenwashing governance should be adapted to different contexts. This has direct relevance for SDG 12 on responsible consumption and production and SDG 13 on climate action, both of which depend on credible sustainability claims and verifiable corporate action. In heavy-asset industries, regulatory attention needs to go beyond disclosure review and include verification of technological substance and physical asset flows. In consumer-facing sectors, clearer standards for environmental claims and stronger traceability of product-level evidence are needed. In financial markets, stronger standardization of ESG classifications and stricter ex post scrutiny of sustainability-labeled products are increasingly necessary to prevent symbolic compliance from undermining decarbonization efforts. The growing relevance of digital enforcement also suggests that data integration, big data analytics, and NLP-based detection tools may play a larger role in identifying more sophisticated forms of greenwashing. Under conditions of opaque global supply chains, expanding sustainable finance, and tightening disclosure mandates, more differentiated, evidence-based, and technology-supported governance approaches are needed to address greenwashing across sectors and institutional contexts.

5.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions

Certain limitations should be acknowledged. The analysis is based on the Web of Science Core Collection and is restricted to publications explicitly indexed under greenwashing-centered terminology. Although this design ensures a dataset grounded in high-quality peer-reviewed literature, it may reduce the visibility of adjacent strands of literature, especially studies framed around sustainability disclosure manipulation, ESG misreporting, consumer response, or marketing communication, particularly when such work is more extensively indexed in other databases or discussed under alternative labels. The exclusive reliance on Web of Science may also limit the capture of practical insights reported in business journals, regional studies, industry-specific reports, and emerging market case studies, as well as recent greenwashing practices discussed outside mainstream academic journals. Consequently, some peripheral themes, regional debates, and business-oriented discussions may appear less prominent in the findings, while the representation of certain related but non-core topics may vary under broader or alternative database coverage.

In addition, the results reflect the academic and policy landscape observed up to 2025. Future research can extend this work in several directions. First, broader database coverage and comparisons between Web of Science and Scopus can be incorporated to examine the effects of retrieval design on peripheral themes, regional debates, and business-oriented discussions. In addition, broader source tracking through Google Scholar, practitioner reports, media coverage, and court cases can be included to capture practical manifestations of greenwashing that are less visible in journal-based bibliometric datasets. Second, comparative research designs could examine heterogeneity more systematically across sectors, regions, and institutional settings. Third, methodological innovation could place greater emphasis on the development and empirical validation of artificial intelligence and natural language processing models that can detect semantic ambiguity and evasive expressions across large volumes of corporate reports. Such tools could also be tested across languages, sectors, and regulatory contexts to improve their comparability and practical usefulness. Fourth, greater attention could be directed to supply chain contexts, particularly the deliberate transfer of Scope 3 emissions and carbon accounting manipulations across complex global networks. Finally, empirical studies could compare emerging markets with developed markets, with particular attention to the debt and equity pricing effects of greenwashing exposure under different conditions of regulatory arbitrage and cultural context.