How Political Connections Affects Corporate Greenwashing - Based on the Perspective of “Media-Corporate Collusion”

Due to the impact of global climate change, China has put forward the "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals", environmental protection is getting more and more attention and importance. The enterprises, as an important part of the society, should take due responsibility in environmental protection issues. However, more and more enterprises conceal, exaggerate or even falsify environmental information disclosure for personal interests, and implement greenwash, so greenwash has become an important social issue in enterprise management. Based on the resource dependence theory and legitimacy theory, this paper takes Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2014 to 2022 as the research object to explore the influence of political connections, political connections level on corporate greenwashing, and the moderating effect of media reports between political connections and corporate greenwashing. The study finds that political affiliation and political affiliation level have a significantly negative effect on corporate greenwashing. In other words, political affiliation and political affiliation level can inhibit corporate greenwashing. The media reports play a negative moderating role in the negative effect of political affiliation on corporate greenwashing, but the moderating role is no longer significant as the level of political affiliation rises.