Shansi Viewpoint | Can Retail Investors Also Inhibit greenwashing? New SYSBS Research Reveals the Significant Power of "Small Shareholders"

A recent study co-authored by Professor Yin Juelin and PhD student Sun Xiao from the School of Business, Sun Yat-sen University, titled "The Power of Retail Investors: The Effect of Online Interactions Over Environmental Issues on Corporate Greenwashing," has been published in Journal of Business Ethics.

Based on data from Chinese A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2015 to 2022, the study used the ERNIE large language model to identify environment-related questions on interactive platforms and symbolic versus substantive environmental disclosures in corporate annual reports. It provides a clear answer: retail investors' environmental concerns can effectively inhibit corporate greenwashing.

The study offers a research perspective on retail investor activism, enriches the research on factors influencing corporate greenwashing, uses the ERNIE large language model to identify retail investors' environmental concerns, and distinguishes between symbolic and substantive corporate environmental disclosures, providing a new method for measuring corporate greenwashing.