Title: NLP-based Study on ESG "Greenwashing" of Companies
Time: 11:00-12:30, Thursday, 9 June 2022
Venue: Conference Room 119, Wenqin Building
Moderator: Dr. Wan Qian
Presenter: Prof. Yang Guochao
Professor at the School of Accounting, Director of the IIDPF Big Data Centre under the Ministry of Education and Science and Technology, and a Wenlan Young Scholar. Professor Yang's main research interests are the analysis of institutional and non-institutional factors in the areas of equity markets, bond markets and public policy.
Abstract
Based on the text data of listed companies' ESG disclosure and actual ESG performance, this paper adopts a semi-supervised topic identification method based on natural language processing to study the "greenwashing" behaviour of ESG of companies. It is found that the length and text similarity of ESG reports of listed companies in China have been increasing year by year, but the proportion of "hard information" has remained the same, i.e. although the total amount of ESG information disclosed by companies has been increasing, the incremental information has not increased accordingly; after identifying the themes of ESG disclosure of companies, it is found that the ESG activities of listed companies in China "drifting green, behaviour cannot be generalised, and its predominant presence is in ESG activities that are difficult to verify. Further research found that when the proportion of 'hard information' in textual disclosures was high, the 'greenwashing' behaviour of difficult-to-verify ESG activities was significantly weaker. This study not only demonstrates the heterogeneity of companies' disclosure on different types of ESG activities, but also provides a theoretical reference for regulators to promote the implementation of ESG concepts.