Abstract: The environmental credit evaluation system is an environmental management means used by environmental protection departments to evaluate the environmental behaviors of enterprises, determine their credit rating, and make it publicly available to society. Then, can the environmental credit rating system exert any impact on the commercial credit financing of enterprises? By making use of the data of the A-share heavily polluting enterprisesin Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2014 to 2020, this paper explores the impact of the environmental credit rating system on corporate commercial credit financing. The findings show that the environmental credit rating system has a non-significant impact on the commercial credit financing of enterprises with better environmental credit, but it can significantly reduce the commercial credit financing of enterprises with poor environmental credit, indicating that the environmental credit rating system has a disciplinary effect on the commercial credit financing of the enterprises with poorer environmental credit. The cause lies in that the environmental credit rating system has increased the policy risks and market risks of enterprises with poorer environmental credit. Further research reveals that the incentive and disciplinary effects of the environmental credit rating system are more significant when the financial system is poorer and the industrial competition is fierce. Therefore, it is necessary to continue to optimize the environmental credit rating system, so as to strengthen the disciplining effect on the enterprises with poorer environmental credit.

Key words: environmental credit rating system, commercial credit financing, financial system, industry competition