Talk the talk, but walk the walk: what do we know about marital demography and corporate greenwashing?

Abstract

Using a sample of 21,628 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market during the period of 2008–2017, this study finds that the divorce–marriage ratio, the proxy for marital demography, is significantly positively associated with corporate greenwashing. This finding suggests that higher divorce–marriage ratio is associated with stronger individualistic social atmosphere, lower conformity to social norms, and more unfavorable attitude towards environmental conservation, abets firms to talk the talk rather than walk the walk, and foments corporate greenwashing. Moreover, China's Environmental Protection Law attenuates above positive relation. Lastly, our conclusions are robust to sensitivity tests using the divorce rate, alternative proxies for greenwashing, and individual-level divorce data, and further our findings are also valid after addressing the endogeneity issue.