Unveiling the green veil: Customer green relational capital and tone ambiguity in supplier environmental disclosure

Some suppliers use ambiguous language in their environmental disclosure to obscure their actual environmental performance. This ambiguity may lead customers to misjudge suppliers’ environmental practices, thereby increasing customers’ sustainability and reputational risks. Therefore, it is critical for customers to understand how to mitigate tone ambiguity in suppliers’ environmental disclosure. Drawing on social capital theory, this study explores the impact of customer green relational capital on the tone ambiguity in supplier environmental disclosure. Using data from 2503 unique customer–supplier dyads year observations of Chinese listed companies between 2010 and 2022, this study finds that customer green relational capital significantly reduces tone ambiguity in supplier environmental disclosure. Furthermore, this inhibitory effect is more pronounced when customer network centrality or customer–supplier environmental strategy orientation fit is high. By introducing the concept of tone ambiguity, this study broadens the scope of environmental disclosure research and enriches the literature on sustainable supply chain management.