Increasingly prominent ecological and environmental problems and extreme climate risks have seriously threatened the survival and development of human society, and the themes of sustainable development, such as ecological protection and green development, have taken up an increasingly important position in the layout of national strategies. As an important microeconomic subject of national economic development, the green transformation of enterprises is the key to realizing sustainable social development. However, when existing literature examines the influencing factors of enterprises’ green transformation from the external environment, it mainly focuses on exploring the influence of formal environmental regulations, and few papers study the influence of informal systems on enterprises’ green transformation. In fact, compared with the formal system, the informal system can also fully stimulate the initiative of enterprises and the public to participate in environmental protection and strengthen the external supervision of enterprises’ green transformation. So, can social credit, as an important informal system, drive corporate green transformation? This paper will explore this question in depth. This paper adopts the CSMAR database, CNRDS database, China Urban Statistical Yearbook and annual reports of listed companies, takes A-share listed companies in SSE and SZSE from 2009 to 2022 as the research samples, refers to the practices of existing studies, adopts entropy weighting method to construct a comprehensive index of corporate green transformation, and takes the establishment of a model pilot city for the construction of a social credit system as a quasi-natural experiment, and adopts the difference-in-differences method to analyze the impact of social credit system construction on enterprise green transformation. It is found that the construction of a social credit system has a significant promotion effect on the green transformation of enterprises, and this conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis shows that the construction of a social credit system can promote the green transformation of enterprises through three channels: alleviating financing constraints, reducing principal-agent costs, and increasing public environmental concern. The heterogeneity analysis indicates that the construction of the social credit system exerts a more pronounced driving effect on enterprises located in regions with ?lower levels of economic development? and ?weaker environmental regulations?. Compared with state-owned enterprises (SOEs), non-heavily polluting enterprises, and non-high-tech enterprises, the construction of the social credit system is more likely to promote the green transformation of non-state-owned, heavily polluting, and high-tech enterprises. Compared with the existing literature, the possible contributions of this paper are as follows: first, in terms of research perspectives, the existing studies have examined the impact of environmental policies on the green transformation of enterprises, and less literature has focused on the relationship between the construction of social credit system and the green transformation of enterprises. Based on the perspective of social credit system construction, this paper comprehensively analyzes its impact on enterprise green transformation, which enriches the related research on enterprise green transformation. Second, in terms of mechanism, this study analyzes how the social credit system drives corporate green transformation through three channels: ?alleviating financing constraints?, ?reducing principal-agent costs?, and ?enhancing public environmental awareness?, thereby deconstructing the mechanism of its influence. At the same time, the heterogeneity test is conducted from the perspectives of enterprise differences and regional differences to capture the heterogeneous effects of social credit system construction on enterprise green transformation. Thirdly, in terms of policy implications, the findings of this paper show that the construction of the social credit system can promote the green transformation of enterprises. This provides a basis for improving the social credit environment and leveraging the value dividend of social credit to empower enterprises’ green and high-quality development.