IntroductionEnvironmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure has become an important component of environmental governance, yet its credibility remains a concern in emerging markets. This study examines whether firm-specific environmental enforcement actions are associated with subsequent stock price crash risk among Chinese listed firms.MethodsUsing 18,392 firm-year observations from 2009 to 2024, we combine environmental enforcement records with firm-level crash-risk measures. We estimate firm fixed-effects models and event-time diagnostic specifications with firm and year fixed effects.Results Environmental enforcement is associated with higher downside tail risk, measured by NCSKEW, DUVOL, Value-at-Risk, and Expected Shortfall. Event-time diagnostics show no clear pre-enforcement increase in crash risk and indicate that the increase is concentrated in the first post-enforcement year rather than in the enforcement year itself. The coefficients for the later post-enforcement years are statistically insignificant. The association is also stronger among firms with greater pre-enforcement greenwashing intensity. Additional mechanism tests reveal no broad near-term deterioration in profitability, operating cash flow, sales growth, leverage, or subsequent enforcement probability. Overall, the documented analyst-belief revisions, these results are more consistent with an enforcement-triggered information-correction process than with fundamental deterioration as the sole explanation.DiscussionThe findings highlight the role of environmental enforcement in strengthening market-based discipline and improving the credibility of environmental information. They nevertheless do not exclude firm-specific compliance or litigation costs that are not fully captured by the available accounting measures.