Research on the Motivation and Consequences of Pandering Information Disclosure by Listed Companies  -- A Case Study of Decathlon and H&M's Greenwashing

Yuheng Wang

doi:10.54254/2754-1169/2025.BL23511

Research Article

Open access

Published on 30 May 2025

Download pdf

Wang,Y. (2025). Research on the Motivation and Consequences of Pandering Information Disclosure by Listed Companies -- A Case Study of Decathlon and H&M's Greenwashing. Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences,186,1-8.

Export citation

Research on the Motivation and Consequences of Pandering Information Disclosure by Listed Companies -- A Case Study of Decathlon and H&M's Greenwashing

Yuheng Wang *^,1,

¹ University of Reading

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

https://doi.org/10.54254/2754-1169/2025.BL23511

Abstract

In recent years, green innovation and sustainable development have gained prominence, prompting listed companies to enhance green information disclosure to meet investor and societal expectations However, despite increased efforts by regulators to crack down, such as increasing interviews and sharing information with green groups, greenwashing—misleading claims about environmental practices—persists. This not only harms investors but also undermines corporate sustainability and image. This paper examines the greenwashing cases of Decathlon and H&M, analyzing motivations and impacts through business models. It finds that while greenwashing may temporarily boost corporate image, it ultimately erodes market trust, increases legal risks, and damages brand reputation. Based on these findings, the paper suggests making use of technical methods and improving supervision and governance mechanisms to guide companies in fulfilling their ESG responsibilities and promoting capital market health. This study enriches theoretical research on greenwashing and offers practical guidance for regulators, holding significant theoretical and practical value.

Keywords

Information disclosure, Greenwashing behavior, ESG, Listed companies

View pdf

References

[1]. Polonsky, M. J., Carlson, L., Grove, S., & Kangun, N. (2014). International Environmental Marketing claims: real change or simple posturing? In Developments in marketing science: proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science (pp. 136–137). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13144-3_37

[2]. Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). (2022). Commitment decision for Decathlon regarding sustainability claims. ACM.nl. Retrieved from https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/commitment-decision-decathlon-regarding-sustainability-claims

[3]. Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). (2022). Commitment decision for H&M regarding sustainability claims. ACM.nl. Retrieved from https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/commitment-decision-handm-regarding-sustainability-claims

[4]. Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business model generation. Retrieved from http://fia.ub.ac.id/katalog/index.php?p=show_detail&id=6698

[5]. H&M. (2024). H&M Group Annual & Sustainability Report 2024. Stockholm, Sweden: H&M Group. Retrieved from https://hmgroup.com/about-us/corporate-governance/annual-report/

[6]. Decathlon Group. (2023). Decathlon Group's 2023 Performance. Retrieved from https://www.decathlon-united.media/pressfiles/decathlon-group-2023-performance

[7]. McKinsey & Company. (2025). Sporting Goods Industry Trends 2025.

[8]. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/sporting-goods-industry-trends

[9]. Garvin, D. A. (1984). What Does “Product Quality” Really Mean? MIT Sloan Management Review.

[10]. Retrieved from https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-does-product-quality-really-mean/•

[11]. Jiangtao, H., Yibin, Z., & Minqiu, D. (2017). Sustainable supply chain management practices, supply chain dynamic capabilities and enterprise performance. Journal of Cleaner Production. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652617312635•

[12]. Investigating the Impact and Effectiveness of Digital Marketing. (2023). Proceedings of the Annual European Conference on Marketing and Product Strategy. https://www.ewadirect.com/proceedings/aemps/article/view/7121

[13]. Baocheng, H., Xiaoqing, R. (2023). Product Market Competition and Information Disclosure Violations: Trigger or Governance? —An Analysis Based on the Cournot and Mlogit Models. Accounting Research. , (8), 68-78. Retrieved from https://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=1r0206c0qe7204b01w6508s0g6382997

[14]. Delmas, M. A., & Burbano, V. C. (2011b). The drivers of greenwashing. California Management Review, 54(1), 64–87. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1525/cmr.2011.54.1.64

[15]. Testa, F., Boiral, O., & Iraldo, F. (2015). Internalization of environmental practices and institutional complexity: Can stakeholders pressures encourage greenwashing? Journal of Business Ethics, 147(2), 287–307. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2960-2

[16]. Talpur, S., Nadeem, M., & Roberts, H. (2023). Corporate social responsibility decoupling: a systematic literature review and future research agenda. Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 25(4), 878–909. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1108/jaar-08-2022-0223

[17]. Kim, E., & Lyon, T. P. (2014). Greenwash vs. Brownwash: Exaggeration and Undue Modesty in Corporate Sustainability Disclosure. Organization Science, 26(3), 705–723. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2014.0949

[18]. Berrone, P., Fosfuri, A., & Gelabert, L. (2015). Does greenwashing pay off? Understanding the relationship between environmental actions and environmental legitimacy. Journal of Business Ethics, 144(2), 363–379. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2816-9

[19]. Feng, Y., Guo, B., Wang, X., & Hu, F. (2024). Facilitating or inhibiting? The impact of environmental information disclosure on enterprise investment value. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 31(5), 7793–7805. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31583-5

[20]. Yang, X., Zheng, C., & Wang, M. (2025). The impact of environmental information disclosure quality on corporate value: The mediating role of innovation investment. Finance Research Letters. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2025.107304

[21]. Plumlee, M., Brown, D., Hayes, R. M., & Marshall, R. S. (2015). Voluntary environmental disclosure quality and firm value: Further evidence. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 34(4), 336–361. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2015.04.004

[22]. Nova. (2025). The legal consequences of misinformation and fake news. BC Law Review. Retrieved from https://bclawreview.org/misinformation-and-fake-news/

[23]. Green, S. (2004). A look at the causes, impact and future of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Journal of International Business and Law, 3(1), 2. Retrieved from https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1024&context=jibl

[24]. Market Abuse Regulations - Insights from EU Frameworks | Article | Chambers and Partners. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://chambers.com/articles/market-abuse-regulations-insights-from-eu-frameworks

[25]. Regulation - 596/2014 - EN - mar regulation - EUR-Lex. (n.d.-b). Retrieved from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2014/596/oj/eng

[26]. Securities law of the People's Republic of China (property-and hit large reserves). (2019). http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c2/c30834/201912/t20191231_304436.html

[27]. Luo, Y. (2023). Misrepresentation in Prospectus: An Analysis of Civil and Criminal Liabilities. International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Management, 5 (4), 388-391. Retrieved from https://ijaem.net/issue_dcp/Misrepresentation%20in%20Prospectus%20%20An%20Analysis%20of%20Civil%20and%20Criminal%20Liabilities.pdf

[28]. CHINA (PRC FIRMS): An Introduction to Dispute Resolution: Litigation (PRC Firms) Law | Chambers and Partners. (n.d.). https://chambers.com/content/item/4439

[29]. Securities and Exchange Commission. (2024). How Investigations Work. SEC.gov. Retrieved from https://www.sec.gov/about/divisions-offices/division-enforcement/how-investigations-work

[30]. U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (2024). Europe's Arbitrary Fines Harm American Companies and Workers. U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Retrieved from https://www.uschamber.com/international/europes-cash-grab

[31]. Amendment (XI) to the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China. (2020). Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China. Retrieved from https://www.mps.gov.cn/n2255079/n6865805/n7355748/n7913217/c7917775/content.html

[32]. ACM. (2024). Going forward, Decathlon and H&M will provide better information about sustainability to consumers. ACM.nl. Retrieved from https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/going-forward-decathlon-and-handm-will-provide-better-information-about-sustainability-consumers

[33]. Badshah, A., Daud, A., Alharbey, R., Banjar, A., Bukhari, A., & Alshemaimri, B. (2024). Big data applications: overview, challenges and future. Artificial Intelligence Review, 57(11). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-024-10938-5

[34]. Lamsal, R., & Kumar, T. V. V. (2020). Artificial intelligence and early warning systems. In Disaster research and management series on the global South (pp. 13–32). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4291-6_2

[35]. Blockchain and the Future of Financial Services. (2024). Deloitte. Retrieved from https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/topics/blockchain-technology/blockchain-future-of-financial-services.html

[36]. Cube Global. (2024). Solutions. Retrieved from https://www.thomsonreuters.in/en/products-services/regulation-compliance/regulatory-intelligence.html

[37]. Bigler, A. J. (2023). Information asymmetry in Finance: From scandals to solutions. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/m/global-identity2?redirectUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.criesnyse.io%2Finformation-asymmetry-in-finance-from-scandals-to-solutions-a619d7a69c86

[38]. United State SEC (2020). Luckin Coffee Announces Withdrawal of its Request for Nasdaq Hearing. GlobeNewswire. Retrieved from https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1767582/000110465920077150/a20-23516_2ex99d1.htm.

Cite this article

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

Disclaimer/Publisher's Note

The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

About volume

Volume title: Proceedings of ICMRED 2025 symposium: Effective Communication as a Powerful Management Tool

Conference website: https://2025.icmred.org/Bratislava.html

ISBN：978-1-80590-153-2(Print) / 978-1-80590-154-9(Online)

Conference date: 30 May 2025

Editor：Lukáš Vartiak

Series: Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences

Volume number: Vol.186

ISSN：2754-1169(Print) / 2754-1177(Online)

© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See Open access policy for details).