Greenwash as Anticompetitive Symbolic Management

As greenwashing scrutiny grows, its competitive implications are becoming harder to ignore. This paper makes two primary contributions:

• Introduces a simple model showing how greenwashing can function as an anti-competitive strategy that deters entry, drives out genuinely green competitors, and even enables coordinated “greenwashing cartels.”

• Examines how competition law in the U.S., Canada, and the EU could address greenwashing not just as deceptive marketing, but as predatory or exclusionary conduct that harms market competition.

This article can be cited and quoted freely but is not open access and can’t be distributed. The attached PDF copy is for your personal reading purposes only.