Do Sustainable Agricultural Technologies Induce Greenwashing? Evidence From Agricultural Firms in Emerging Markets

Sustainable agricultural technologies provide an important pathway for emerging economies to achieve the coordinated development of environmental protection and food security. However, due to the lag in the realization of technological benefits, agricultural firms may rely on impression management to convey green commitments during the early stages of technology adoption, thereby engaging in greenwashing behaviors. Therefore, whether sustainable agricultural technologies can truly improve environmental performance remains an important question. Based on impression management theory and legitimacy theory, this study examines the impact of sustainable agricultural technologies on corporate greenwashing behaviors and their boundary conditions using a sample of representative agricultural firms from the largest emerging economy and firm‐level panel data from 2011 to 2024. The results show that sustainable agricultural technologies have a significant inverted U‐shaped relationship with greenwashing behaviors, with impression management providing an important behavioral explanation for this relationship. Furthermore, agricultural supply chain characteristics significantly influence this inverted U‐shaped relationship, with factors such as inventory turnover, cooperation stability, and information transparency constituting important boundary conditions for the impact of sustainable agricultural technologies on greenwashing behaviors. Finally, legitimacy pressures arising from food security policies, ecological legitimacy requirements, and innovation‐oriented expectations in emerging markets serve as important contextual factors influencing the inverted U‐shaped relationship between sustainable agricultural technologies and greenwashing.