Do Geographical Indication Products Enhance County-Level Ecological Well-Being?

Geographical indication (GI) certification is widely promoted as a market-based tool for rural sustainability. However, causal evidence on whether geographical indication products (GIPs) improve ecological well-being remains scarce. This study uses a balanced panel of 1487 Chinese counties from 2007 to 2022 and a two-way fixed-effects difference-in-differences design with a one-year lagged treatment to examine the effect of GIPs on the Ecological Quality Index (EQI). The result shows that GIPs raise EQI by 0.149 points, which corresponds to 0.31% of the mean and 1.19% of the standard deviation. The effect appears three years after certification and persists thereafter. In addition, mechanism tests identify pollution reduction as the main channel; lower industrial sulfur dioxide emissions and fewer green patent applications provide evidence consistent with the proposed mechanisms. The benefits concentrate in less-developed provinces and the central region. Furthermore, a spatial Durbin model based on county-boundary contiguity detects positive spillovers through spatial feedback, and the estimated total impact incorporating the spatial multiplier is more than five times the non-spatial estimate. GI policy may help reconcile rural development with ecological conservation, although its benefits are context-dependent, lagged, and spatially diffuse.