Can the China’s environmental tax reform improve the enterprises sustainable environmental protection practice?—from the perspective of ISO14001 certification

From the perspective of ISO14001 certification, we explored the impact of environmental protection tax on enterprises’ long-term environmental practice decisions based on the differential-in-difference model. Our results show that environmental protection tax reform can promote enterprise ISO14001 certification behavior. This positive effect comes from increased enforcement intensity and compliance costs. When the external supervision and governance environment of enterprises is better (i.e., higher degree of marketization and media attention), the shock of environmental tax reform on enterprises’ ISO14001 certification behavior is more significant. Heterogeneity analysis found that the promotion of environmental protection fees-to-tax conversion to ISO14001 certification behavior of enterprises is mainly reflected in non-state-owned key enterprises, small-scale enterprises, and high financing constraints enterprises. Economic consequences test shows that environmental tax policy can improve the green innovation of enterprises in the current and subsequent years, but it does not improve the financial performance in the short term. Our study provides supporting evidence to identify whether environmental tax is a long-term mechanism to promote voluntary environmental management by enterprises.