Green legitimacy or greenwashing in investor relations of Indonesia’s coal mining industry

Environmental disclosure in investor relations has emerged as a critical site of legitimacy contestation in carbon-intensive industries, yet remains understudied relative to CSR and marketing communication. This study examines whether the environmental narratives of Indonesia’s five largest coal companies — ADRO, BUMI, ITMG, PTBA, and INDY — constitute substantive green legitimacy or symbolic greenwashing in investor-facing communications between 2019 and 2023. Drawing on legitimacy theory and the substantive-symbolic distinction, a Green Legitimacy-Greenwashing (GL-GW) Index is constructed using ten indicators derived from international disclosure standards (GRI, TCFD, ISSB) and Indonesia’s institutional context (PROPER, ISO 14001), applying thematic content analysis, a quantitative scorecard, and a claim-evidence matrix with intercoder reliability of Krippendorff’s Alpha >0.80. Three findings emerge: GL-GW scores ranging from 62 to 82 within a single regulatory jurisdiction confirm that regulatory homogeneity does not produce disclosure convergence; state ownership correlates consistently with more substantive disclosure, suggesting ownership-linked accountability structures moderate disclosure quality; and post-2021 score improvements concentrated in internationally exposed firms coincide with COP26 and ISSB establishment, indicating that global capital market signals are more proximate drivers of disclosure improvement than domestic regulatory compliance. The GL-GW Index offers a replicable framework transferable to other extractive sectors and emerging market contexts.