Are Enterprises Willing to Participate in Voluntary Environmental Regulation? A Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Test

Voluntary environmental regulation is characterized by its non-compulsory nature, which gives enterprises the right to make their own choices. The wide application and high prevalence of the ISO14001 standard in China make it a representative and typical standard that can effectively reflect the degree of voluntary participation of enterprises in environmental management. Therefore, this paper uses whether enterprises have obtained this certification as a proxy measure of whether they have participated in voluntary environmental regulation for model construction. Enterprises that choose to participate indicate that they have higher self-imposed limits on environmental protection and have invested significant resources in reducing pollution and emissions. In order to investigate the willingness of enterprises to participate, a four-party evolutionary game model of “central government–enterprises–investors–consumers” was developed for theoretical analysis, followed by an empirical test using a numerical simulation method, aiming at identifying the key factors influencing the voluntary participation of enterprises. The study found that the central government’s active implementation is a key factor in promoting the active participation of enterprises in voluntary environmental regulation; investors’ green investment and consumers’ concern also play an important role, but the influence of consumers’ concern is relatively small and has a partial substitution effect with investors’ green investment; increasing central government rewards and boosting the amount of green investment by investors will effectively increase the speed and motivation of enterprises to participate.