Abstract: ESG report as an important carrier of corporate carbon information disclosure has such problems as unclear disclosure principles and incomplete disclosure system, so some enterprises tend to greenwash their carbon information through ESG report. This paper takes China’s A-share listed companies that published ESG reports from 2018 to 2022 as the research sample to empirically examine the direct impact of corporate carbon information greenwashing on investor sentiment and the mechanism underlying the impact. The results show that carbon information greenwashing provokes investor sentiment, but this effect is not significant for institutional investors and companies that are at their declining stage, not keen on green investment, not much market-oriented and under strong government intervention(or exposed to an environment where market plays a less important role than thegovernment). Meanwhile, environmental subsidies and financing constraints mediate the relationship between carbon information greenwashing and investor sentiment, but they show a “masking” effect. In addition, investor sentiment magnifies the negative impact of carbon information greenwashing on internal enterprise value and external stock price crash risk. This paper enriches the research on measurement and economic consequences in the field of carbon disclosure while providing a reference for standardizing ESG disclosure.

Key words: carbon information greenwashing, investor sentiment, ESG report, impression management, text analysis