Can environmental courts inhibit corporate greenwash? Evidence from heterogeneous LLMs

Corporate greenwash exploits information asymmetry, yet whether environmental courts can constrain this behavior remains insufficiently examined. This paper uses ensemble inference from heterogeneous Large Language Models to construct a proxy for corporate greenwash, capturing excessive environmental rhetoric and suspicious exaggeration in the disclosures of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2001 to 2024. Using the staggered establishment of environmental courts, we examine whether this judicial reform is associated with changes in corporate greenwash. The results indicate that environmental court establishment is significantly associated with a decline in excessive environmental rhetoric and suspicious exaggeration in corporate green disclosure. Mechanism analyses suggest that this association is linked to alleviated financing constraints, greater green innovation, and stronger media oversight. Administrative enforcement intensity further strengthens the negative association, consistent with administrative–judicial complementarity. Heterogeneity analyses indicate that the association is more pronounced among state-owned enterprises and firms led by local CEOs. Overall, this study provides evidence on how judicial institutions may shape strategic environmental disclosure, offers a useful reference for emerging economies seeking to coordinate judicial and administrative environmental governance, and demonstrates the value of heterogeneous LLM ensembles for analyzing unstructured corporate disclosures.