Programmable ESG governance for green bonds in emerging economies

Abstract

Green bonds are increasingly used to finance sustainability transitions, yet in emerging economies, their effectiveness is often undermined by weak governance capacity, fragmented regulatory enforcement, and persistent information asymmetry. These structural constraints reduce investor confidence and limit capital mobilization toward environmentally impactful projects. This study examines whether digitally embedded governance mechanisms can strengthen ESG enforcement and improve trust in emerging-market green bond markets. We define programmable governance as verification and enforcement rules embedded directly into financial contract execution, so that compliance triggers and disbursement conditions are evaluated automatically against verified inputs rather than through ex-post discretionary review. Using a Design Science Research approach, we develop a programmable ESG governance framework that links environmental performance verification to conditional financial disbursement through smart contract logic. The framework integrates real-time monitoring, auditable compliance triggers, and role-specific interfaces to operationalize ESG accountability within the bond lifecycle. To assess behavioral responses to such governance infrastructure, we conduct a discrete-choice experiment with 62 financially literate participants, examining investment selection and stated yield sensitivity across alternative governance regimes. The results indicate that bonds incorporating verifiable, contract-embedded governance mechanisms are selected more frequently and are associated with lower stated yield requirements within the experimental setting, with the effect strongest among participants reporting lower prior trust in issuer-country regulatory institutions—indicating that programmable governance is most valued where institutional weakness is greatest. These findings provide behavioral evidence on the monitoring-cost channel of cross-border green bond home bias, suggesting that programmable governance can complement weak institutional enforcement by improving perceived credibility, reducing information asymmetry, and strengthening the monitorability of ESG commitments—while remaining dependent on legal and regulatory institutions for dispute resolution and accountability. This study contributes by integrating governance design with behavioral evaluation in a single empirical framework, distinguishing it from prior blockchain-based green bond research that has addressed these dimensions separately.