Voluntary Environmental Regulation and Corporate Greenwashing Behavior: Evidence from China’s Green Factory Certification

Corporate greenwashing behavior (GB) undermines sustainable development and is difficult to curb under China’s still-evolving mandatory environmental regulation. We use 2009–2023 Chinese A-share firm data to test whether green factory certification (GFC) reduces GB. The evidence indicates that certification significantly reduces this behavior. Channel analyses link this effect to lower financing constraints, reduced information asymmetry, and stronger executive green cognition. Subsample tests show larger effects among heavily polluting firms, non-SOEs, firms with short-term-oriented executives, firms in low-green-finance regions, and weak-governance firms. The effect is also stronger where mandatory environmental regulation is weaker, suggesting that voluntary and mandatory regulation can complement each other in governing GB.