Government Regulation, Social Media Auditing, and Consumer Participation in Greenwashing Governance: A Four-Party Evolutionary Game Analysis

Greenwashing distorts green markets and impedes sustainable development. This study develops a four-party asymmetric evolutionary game model to examine the strategic interactions among government, companies, social media, and consumers in greenwashing governance. By formulating replicator dynamics and conducting a Jacobian-based local stability analysis, the research identifies three representative locally asymptotically stable boundary equilibria under specified parameter configurations: such as dual-oversight market withdrawal, consumer-redress-driven governance, and social-media-absent regulation-driven governance. Numerical simulations examine benchmark evolutionary trajectories and selected parameter variations. The results indicate that system outcomes are sensitive to adjustments in complaint compensation, consumer complaint cost, the additional cost of genuine green production, and social media auditing costs. Specifically, high penalties for lenient auditing can induce persistent systemic fluctuations, while strict auditing alone may inadvertently stabilize a market-withdrawal outcome without prompting genuine green behavior. Under the specified parameter conditions of the model, the findings suggest that stable governance is associated with coordinated incentives for genuine production, economically viable consumer redress, and appropriately calibrated auditing policies.