Regulatory Arbitrage, Greenwashing and Environmental Impacts: Evidence From China's Green Bond Market

ABSTRACT China's green credit market and green bond market are governed by distinct regulatory frameworks, with significant divergence in their treatment of heavily polluting industries. This study explores how such regulatory misalignment affects the environmental effectiveness of green bonds. Our findings indicate that heavily polluting firms, constrained by stricter green credit policies, often resort to using green bonds for regulatory arbitrage. Consequently, these firms achieve only minimal environmental improvements after issuing green bonds. In contrast, lightly polluting firms exhibit substantial enhancements in their environmental performance. At the city level, the emission reduction effect of green bonds issued by lightly polluting firms is greater than that of heavily polluting firms. By manually collecting data on the usage of bond proceeds, we identify evidence of greenwashing. Specifically, heavily polluting firms are more likely to divert funds toward non‐green expenditures and debt repayment, as compared to lightly polluting firms. These findings emphasise the crucial impact of an integrated regulatory framework on the effective implementation of green finance policies.