Greenwashing Practices Threat in Indonesian Land-Based Private Sector's Participation in Carbon Trading

The land-based private sector is one of the key actors in implementing carbon trading in Indonesia.This study aims to explore the behavioural intention of the land-based private sector in participating in carbon trading, identify whether the intentions pose an immoral behavioural threat, and provide an alternative strategy to avoid the threat.Based on interviews with top-level executives of land-based private organisations, thematic analysis was used to analyse their behavioural intention in participating in carbon trading in line with the theory of planned behaviour.Furthermore, the legitimacy theory was applied to justify the emergence of the greenwashing threat and provide an alternative solution to avoid the threat.The results indicate that the land-based private sector intends to participate in carbon trading as the implementation offers new business opportunities to gain economic benefits.Despite resulting positive behaviour, the sector's participation poses an immoral threat to greenwashing behaviour in the implementation.Unethical behaviour emerges due to the large legitimacy gap or incompatibility between a business's actions and social pressures regarding what the actions should be.This study concludes that carbon performance disclosure should be mandated to all emitter corporations to avoid greenwashing threats in Indonesian carbon trading implementation, covering strict principle criteria.Also, the principle criteria for businesses' carbon disclosures must be validated thoroughly in the National Registry System process.