In recent years, increasing attention to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate change mitigation has intensified expectations for firms to integrate environmental considerations into their management practices. As investors, consumers, governments, and NGOs increasingly scrutinize corporate environmental behavior, environmental disclosure and ESG activities have become unavoidable. However, alongside the expansion of environmental disclosure, greenwashing has become more salient. Greenwashing should not be understood merely as misreporting, but rather as a symbolic response that may emerge when firms face heightened external pressure without sufficient capacity for substantive environmental improvement. This study examines how institutional pressures influence corporate greenwashing and explores the moderating role of managerial ability. Using panel data of publicly listed apparel-related firms in Japan, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom from 2020 to 2024, we conduct empirical analyses to investigate the interaction between external pressures and internal managerial capabilities. Institutional pressures are distinguished into regulatory and normative dimensions, reflecting differences in enforcement mechanisms and social expectations. The findings indicate that institutional pressures alone do not uniformly constrain greenwashing. Instead, their effects depend on managerial ability. Higher managerial ability mitigates greenwashing under regulatory pressure, while it may intensify greenwashing under normative pressure. These results highlight the importance of considering both the nature of external pressure and firms’ internal capabilities in understanding and mitigating corporate greenwashing.

Keywords

Greenwashing, Institutional Pressure, Managerial Ability, Environmental Disclosure, Apparel Industry