Sustainability certifications as strategic tools: environmental accountability, institutional robustness and global convergence

Sustainability certifications are increasingly used as strategic tools to advance accountability for environmental sustainability. This study addresses the challenge of fragmented national certification standards by proposing and applying a replicable method to assess the structural robustness and convergence of industry-specific sustainability certification standards toward global benchmarks. The study develops and tests a five-step method combining qualitative assessment and quantitative comparison to evaluate the robustness of industry-specific national certification standards and their degree of alignment with international benchmarks. The method integrates a framework-based comparative analysis, a dummy variable index, a gap analysis and robustness checks focused on audit mechanisms, enforcement provisions and international applicability. The ISO 14000 series serves as the reference benchmark. Although the empirical application is industry-specific, the method is strategically designed for transferability across sectors and fragmented certification environments. The results reveal varying levels of institutional robustness among national standards and indicate selective alignment with internationally recognised structural features in a limited number of cases, consistent with early harmonisation pressures, rather than full-scale convergence toward a globally recognised model. The study contributes to research on sustainability standards, environmental policy and