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Reasonable risk-taking is an important prerequisite for corporate green transformation. How environmental regulation policies affect corporate risk-taking is an issue worthy of discussion under the background of the development of economic and social green transformation. Based on a theoretical analysis of the effects of environmental regulations, this study used the data of China’ s A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2019 to empirically test the impact of environmental regulation policies on corporate risk-taking. The study found that: ① The strengthening of environmental regulations would significantly increase the level of corporate risk-taking. ② The mechanism test found that both the ‘dynamic effect’ of environmental regulations promoting technological progress and market competition efficiency and the ‘pressure effect’ aggravating enterprises’ production costs and the degree of enterprises’ shadow banking activities would lead to a rise in the level of corporate risk-taking. ③ The regional innovation environment and the cost transfer ability of enterprises significantly affected the policy effect of environmental regulations on improving corporate risk-taking. ④ Further re⁃ search showed that environmental regulations promoted corporate risk-taking, reduced the environmental performance of enterprises, and improved the default risk of enterprises, indicating that the negative effect brought by ‘pressure effect’ occupied a dominant position. This study has not only enriched the research on the effects of environmental regulation policies, but also expanded the research horizons of factors affecting corporate risk-taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]