Can Green Labels Promote Corporate ESG Performance?—A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on Green Factory Certification

如何有效提升企业ESG表现是推动我国经济可持续发展的重要课题。以工信部于2016年推出的绿色工厂认证体系为准自然实验冲击，基于2013~2023年A股制造业上市企业数据，通过构建多时点双重差分模型，实证检验了政府主导的自愿型环境规制对企业绿色及可持续发展表现的激励效果。研究发现，政府绿色认证对于企业ESG表现具有显著的促进作用；作用机制检验表明，政府绿色认证主要是通过提高企业绿色创新水平、增加企业社会责任参与和加强企业内部控制等路径实现；异质性分析表明，政府绿色认证对企业ESG表现的促进作用在大规模企业、国有企业和高污染企业中更为显著。研究从自愿型环境规制的视角探究了提升企业ESG表现的可能路径，为经济绿色转型和可持续发展提供了政策建议。Effectively enhancing corporate ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) performance constitutes a critical issue for advancing sustainable economic development in China. Existing research primarily focuses on the coercive effect of command-and-control instruments on corporate sustainability, with insufficient attention paid to soft, voluntary policy tools such as green certification. Utilizing the Green Factory Certification System launched by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in 2016 as a quasi-natural experiment shock, this study empirically examines the incentive effects of government-led voluntary environmental regulation on corporate green and sustainable development performance. Based on data from A-share listed manufacturing firms in China spanning 2013 to 2023, a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model is constructed for analysis. The findings reveal that government green certification significantly promotes corporate ESG performance. This result remains robust after undergoing parallel trend tests, PSM-DID (Propensity Score Matching combined with DID), placebo tests, and entropy balancing. Mechanism analysis indicates that green certification primarily enhances ESG performance by elevating corporate green innovation levels, increasing corporate social responsibility engagement, and strengthening internal controls. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the promotional effect of green certification on ESG performance is more pronounced among large-scale enterprises, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and highly polluting firms. This study explores potential pathways to improve corporate ESG performance from the perspective of voluntary environmental regulation, providing policy recommendations for green economic transformation and sustainable development.