<![CDATA[The rapid expansion of corporate sustainability reporting in the palm oil sector has intensified demands for transparency, however, while simultaneously raising concerns about greenwashing driven by selective narrative disclosure. This study examines the credibility of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) communication by comparing corporate sustainability reports with external media coverage across 198 palm oil plantation companies operating in eight major producing countries Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Colombia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Guatemala, and Honduras for the year 2025. Employing Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, the study constructs a Greenwashing Severity Index (GSI) that measures the divergence between corporate ESG self-representation and independent external narratives drawn from news media coverage and NGO reports. The index integrates ESG-specific focus measures, sentiment analysis, TF-IDF word weighting, and topic modelling to quantify imbalances in ESG communication. Findings reveal moderate yet widespread greenwashing across countries, company types, and plantation sizes, with substantial heterogeneity linked to regulatory maturity, certification adoption (RSPO, ISPO, MSPO), and stakeholder oversight. Greater narrative alignment is observed among RSPO-certified companies and exchange-listed plantation groups. Propensity score matching analysis further indicates that companies exhibiting unbalanced emphasis across ESG dimensions display significantly higher GSI values, consistent with strategic disclosure behaviour. Overall, findings suggest that formal transparency alone is insufficient to ensure credible ESG communication in the global palm oil industry.]]>
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