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A systematic literature review on greenwashing and its relationship to stakeholders: state of art and future research agenda [1]

['Santos', 'Celiafsantos Hotmail.Com', 'Ceber - Centre For Business', 'Economics Research', 'Faculty Of Economics', 'University Of Coimbra', 'Coimbra', 'Coelho', 'Marques', 'Alzira.Marques Ipleiria.Pt']

Date: 2023-07

2.1 Research methodology

To pursue an in-depth understanding of the state of the art of greenwashing literature, focusing on its effects on stakeholders, this study used a two-step methodology: first, the authors conducted a bibliometric analysis, which indicates the evolution of the research in the greenwashing field. Bibliometric analyses are quite useful for decoding or interpreting a wide set of data in a precise way, which allows making advances in a certain field in several ways (Donthu et al. 2021). Additionally, bibliometric mapping makes it possible to conduct a statistical evaluation of several connections across publications, providing a clear insight on the topic by visualization of the maps (van Eck and Waltman 2010). The second step consists of an overview of the current state of literature, by means of a literature review.

A systematic literature review is defined as the “means of identifying, evaluating and interpreting all the available research relevant to a particular research question, topic area, or phenomenon of interest” (Grant and Booth 2009). This type of approach allows a transparent and reproducible process of selection, analysis and reporting of previous research on a specific topic (Denyer and Tranfield 2009). The authors adopted the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach. PRISMA is used to help authors improve their systematic reviews reporting (Page et al. 2021). PRISMA incorporates four sequential steps: identification, screening, eligibility, and study inclusion. This framework assures transparency in the selection and analysis of included studies and allows for other investigators to replicate this process (Booth et al. 2020).

2.2 Method

From the several databases available for query, the authors used WoS, because it is considered the most reliable, powerful and most trusted database in the world (Saleem et al. 2021), frequently used for bibliometric studies in management and organization fields. Nevertheless, the authors acknowledge that other studies might be indexed in other databases, and it is possible that some might have been left out of this analysis. The records, which were later used in the review, were identified on December 28, 2021, in WoS core collection, with a time frame including all years to date, with no limitations on document type, language, or citations databases.

Similar to other authors’ approaches (de Freitas Netto et al., 2020; Gatti et al., 2019), and in order to assess the true dimension of literature citing the term greenwashing, we used the term “greenwash*” in a Topic search, returning 508 articles. In other words, we used Boolean Proximity search, to help us find specific words that are near greenwashing (i.e., greenwashing, greenwash, greenwashed, greenwashes). As the asterisk represents any number of characters, the search will encompass all these words. To narrow our research and focus on our objectives, we subsequently limited the number of documents based on the selection of document type, citation databases, data rage, language, and categories. Exclusion criteria and selection process are described in the PRISMA 2020 flow diagram (see Fig. 1). We excluded 198 documents during the screening process, leaving 310 articles to track trends in the usage of greenwashing in the academic literature.

The authors used information obtained from WoS to deliver productivity measures about the research field, considering the historical evolution of the publications, the most influential articles, the main journals where they were published and the most prolific authors. This investigation also includes a bibliometric mapping approach using the VOSviewer software to analyze what the patterns and hot topics are in the field of greenwashing. VOSviewer makes it possible to create and visualize maps, taking into account the co-citations of author or journal; bibliometric networks based on citation, co-citation, co-authorship, bibliographic coupling, amongst others (Moya-Clemente et al. 2021). It is quite useful for displaying large bibliometric maps in an easy-to-interpret way (van Eck and Waltman 2010).

To establish a connection between greenwashing and its impact on different stakeholders, and to maintain the accuracy of our study, we executed supplementary filtering processes (Dangelico and Vocalelli 2017; Pizzi et al. 2020). Initially, we utilized keyword combinations to exclude articles that might address topics unrelated to the effects of greenwashing on stakeholders (Drejerska et al. 2023). We only considered articles that contained the combination of both the term “greenwash*” and stakeholder, shareholder, investor, consumer, customer, client, employee, worker, partner, supplier or competitor. In this process we excluded 112 documents. Second, although the selected terms (e.g., greenwash* and stakeholder*) were mentioned in the title and/or keyword, and/or abstract of the article, there is always the risk that this is not the central focus of the paper. Thus, using a double-check process, we manually reviewed all keywords, titles, and abstracts of the articles, and, when needed, the entire content of each paper included in the data base, excluding 159 documents that were not relevant to our subject of investigation. 39 articles fully met the review protocol, as presented in Fig. 1, and were used in the literature review.

To gain insight into potential avenues for future research, it is imperative to understand the latest research trends Thus, we employed a methodology recommended by Oliveira et al. (2019) to analyze recent articles and papers published by the most cited authors. This involved scrutinizing the most recurring topics and determining the frequency with which they were directly or indirectly addressed in the literature. By conducting such an analysis, we can reveal gaps and trends that have yet to be explored (de Oliveira et al. 2019; Tallon et al. 2019).

To investigate these trends and gaps, we adopted a similar approach to Juliani and Oliveira (2016) who utilized literature from the previous three years. Accordingly, we limited our analysis to the most recent publications (i.e., the period from 2019 to 2021) to uncover research gaps and potential avenues for further investigation (Kraus et al. 2020). This examination of highly cited and recent literature will provide robust insights into fruitful directions for future research. The number of citations was also considered, as only the ones that were cited at least one time were included. Therefore, limiting our analysis of referenced documents to the most prominent articles (Frerichs and Teichert 2023). This final step resulted in 24 articles.

In summary, the first and most extensive dataset consisted of 310 articles, and it underwent bibliometric analysis to identify the most relevant research in the field of greenwashing. The second dataset, comprising 39 articles, was utilized in the literature review to explore the influence of greenwashing on stakeholders, as per the objectives of this investigation. Finally, the third dataset, encompassing 24 articles, was used to identify research gaps and future investigation opportunities. The outcomes obtained during each stage of the systematic review process are illustrated in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for systematic review on Greenwashing effects on stakeholders Full size image

* The research began with the usage of the term “greenwash*” (i.e., greenwashing, greenwash, greenwashed, greenwashes) in a Topic (title, abstract, author keywords, and Keywords Plus) search.

** Exclusion based on the selection of document type, citation databases, data rage, language, and categories:

Document type: Article.

Citation databases: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, ESCI.

Data range: all years to 2021.

Language: English.

Categories: (count > 10): Business (101), Environmental Studies (98), Management (68), Environmental Sciences (65), Green Sustainable Science Technology (60), Ethics (26), Communication (25), Economics (25), Business Finance (23) Engineering Environmental (22), Hospitality Leisure Sport Tourism (18) and Political Science (11).

*** Exclusion based on:

Reason 1 – Additional filtering keywords: Articles that did not included both keywords: Greenwashing and several stakeholders: TS=(greenwash*) AND (((((((((((TS=(stakeholder*)) OR TS=(shareholder*)) OR TS=(investor*))) OR TS=(consumer*)) OR TS=(customer*)) OR TS=(client*)) OR TS=(employee*)) OR TS=(worker*)) OR TS=(partner*)) OR TS=(supplier*)) OR TS=(competitor*) Reason 2 – Relevance to the study based on the reading of keywords, titles, abstracts, and entire document, if necessary.

**** Exclusion based on:

Reason 3 – Features less than 1 (one) citation. Reason 4 – Exclusion based on year of publication (before 2019).

Adapted from: Page et al. (2020)

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[1] Url: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11301-023-00337-5

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