The effective design of green financial policies is crucial for balancing the operational pressures of heavily polluting enterprises with the goal of sustained carbon emission reduction. This study investigates the impact of the Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone (GFRIPZ) policy by employing a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model based on firm-level panel data from 2012 to 2021, covering A-share listed enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The results show that GFRIPZs significantly reduced carbon emissions in pilot regions, with heterogeneous effects observed across enterprise types—particularly among large enterprises, state-owned enterprises, and those located in financially developed areas. To uncover the underlying mechanisms, we compare two behavioral responses: green innovation, marked by long-term investment in green technologies, and expedient compliance, involving short-term, strategic compliance behaviors. Our findings indicate that GFRIPZs did not effectively promote green innovation. Instead, it has encouraged a shift from productive capital investment toward un-productive, symbolic actions aimed at fulfilling policy requirements. These responses risk undermining the long-term objective of green transformation and may contribute to a broader shift from real economic activity toward speculative or less productive investments, raising concerns about the quality and sustainability of the low-carbon transition.

Improving the quality of corporate environmental information disclosure (EID) can be framed as a multilevel principal–agent problem involving the central government, local governments, and firms. This study develops a central–local–firm evolutionary game model and exploits China’s Environmental Protection Admonishing Talk (EPAT) policy in a staggered difference-in-differences framework to examine how vertical accountability affects corporate EID quality. Using A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2020, we find that EPAT significantly improves EID quality, with the baseline estimate indicating an average increase of approximately 1.8 percentage points. The result remains positive across alternative staggered-DID estimators and a range of robustness checks. The enforcement-related results further show that EPAT is associated with higher local environmental protection expenditure and more environmental penalties, consistent with strengthened local environmental enforcement. The findings suggest that vertical accountability can improve EID quality and help mitigate principal–agent frictions in the EID process among the central government, local governments, and firms.