A Study On The Antecedent Histories And Performance Impacts Of Greenwash In Rare Earth Companies

As a national strategic resource,rare earth has an irreplaceable guarantee function for achieving the "double carbon" goal and maintaining national security.However,China’s rare earth enterprises have long neglected the construction of the industrial ecological chain,forming a "high consumption-low efficiency-high pollution-difficult to manage" industrial development model has caused serious waste of resources and ecological damage."Since the 13 th Five-Year Plan,the government has emphasized the ecological and environmental management of the rare earth industry and introduced a series of policies and regulations to clarify the orientation of mandatory disclosure of environmental information and green development of rare earth enterprises.The strong environmental protection pressure makes rare earth enterprises face the dilemma of environmental management and short-term economic benefits,and the quality and integrity of their environmental information disclosure is becoming an increasingly important issue,with greenwash phenomena such as "inconsistent words and actions" and "selective disclosure".The term "greenwash" was proposed by Western environmentalists in response to the false environmental propaganda and self-polishing behavior,combining the terms "green"and "whitewash".It can be regarded as a kind of fraud in the field of environmental information disclosure.Most of the existing studies have focused on the consequences of corporate greenwash,and its motivation has not received much attention.The joint effects among the influencing factors are less discussed,and the studies on influencing factors and performance impact are conducted independently without linkage and dialogue.Based on this,this paper raises the following three questions:(1)Are there environmental information greenwash behaviors in rare earth enterprises?(2)How do multiple antecedent conditions match to form a greenwash configuration?(Are the different paths the same?)How does the greenwash configuration change dynamically?(3)Do different greenwash configurations have the same impact on the performance of rare earth enterprises(Do they have the same effect in different ways)? In order to answer the above questions,firstly,the textual analysis method is used to assess the level of environmental information disclosure of rare earth enterprises,focusing on their environmental information greenwash behavior;secondly,five representative antecedent conditions are identified based on the fraud triangle theoretical framework,and the fs QCA method is used to explore the high/non-high level greenwash configuration derived from the linkage effect of each antecedent condition,explore the alternative/complementary relationship and dynamic changes of each histories,and back to each configuration representative case.Finally,multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the differential effects of different types of greenwash configuration on firm performance.The study found that:(1)the level of environmental information disclosure of rare earth enterprises needs to be improved and there are environmental information greenwash behaviors mainly characterized by "inconsistent words and actions" and "selective disclosure".(2)There are three types of high level drifting groups,i.e.market environment induced,competitive pressure driven and regulatory body absent;there are three types of non-high level drifting groups,i.e.supervision pressure inhibited,conscious compliance and government pressure dominated.(3)The effects of the three types of high-level greenwash configuration on firm performance are negatively correlated,but there are differences.The market environment induced configuration is negatively but insignificantly related to firm performance;the competitive pressure driven and regulatory subject absence configurations are significantly and negatively related to firm performance.Finally,the thesis proposes countermeasures for the governance of greenwash in rare earth enterprises with the government,media and enterprises as the main bodies,which can provide reference for the government and media to guide the practice of corporate environmental information disclosure from the system and public opinion,provide a basis for the internal governance of enterprises,and provide reference for the governance of greenwash in other industries.