Greenwash
What is greenwashing?
"Greenwashing is any communication that leads the listener to adopt an overly favorable impression of a company’s greenness." - Dr. Thomas Lyon: Corporate sustainability and initiatives
Research to Stop Corporate Greenwashing
Note. The dotted line marks the status of the literature and publications at the time of our last review (Lyon & Montgomery, 2015). While Web of Science constitutes the most complete database of scientific journal articles, it does not offer full-text search. Therefore, the search includes only the articles in which greenwashing plays an important role and appears in the title, abstract, or keywords; those results are in the upper left panel. We also searched ABI/Inform & EBSCO for academic articles, since these two searches allow more readily for the inclusion of greenwashing anywhere in the text, although greenwashing may only play a minor role in the article; those results are in the upper right panel. We searched ABI/Inform and EBSCO for trade journal articles using the same approach; those results are in the lower left panel. Duplicates have been removed for combined searches. Finally, we searched Factiva for all news articles using the same approach; those results are in the lower right panel.
Academic Articles:
Lyon, T. P., Montgomery, A. W., & Barg, J. (2023). No End in Sight? A Greenwash Review and Research Agenda. Organization & Environment, 0(0).
Lyon, T. P., & Montgomery, A. W. (2015). The means and end of greenwash. Organization & Environment, 28(2), 223-249.
Kim, Eun-Hee, & Lyon, T. P. (2015). Greenwash vs. Brownwash: Exaggeration and undue modesty in corporate sustainability disclosure. Organization Science 26, no. 3: 705-723.
Lyon, T. P., & Montgomery, A. W. (2013). Tweetjacked: The impact of social media on corporate greenwash. Journal of business ethics, 118, 747-757.
Lyon, T. P., & Maxwell, J. W. (2011). Greenwash: Corporate environmental disclosure under threat of audit. Journal of economics & management strategy, 20(1), 3-41.
Kim, Eun-Hee, & Lyon, T.P. (2011). Strategic environmental disclosure: Evidence from the DOE's voluntary greenhouse gas registry. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 61, no. 3 (2011): 311-326.
Popular Press:
How corporations use greenwashing to convince you they are battling climate change, The Conversation, 2023
How corporations use greenwashing to convince you they are battling climate change, San Francisco Chronicle, 2023
Dr. Thomas Lyon: Corporate sustainability initiatives, SciLine, 2023
When corporations take credit for green deeds their lobbying may tell another story, The Conversation, 2018