Can Digital Finance Improve Corporate Environmental Performance? Evidence from Heavy Polluting Listed Companies in China

ABSTRACT

In the context of the digital transformation of China’s financial system and the synergistic growth of its economic environment, this research explores the impact of digital finance development on the environmental performance of enterprises. Through empirical analysis of data gathered from A-share heavy polluters from 2011 to 2020, our findings show that digital finance effectively improves the environmental performance of heavy polluters. The conclusions remain robust after controlling for endogeneity issues and running a series of robustness tests. The mechanism test reveals that the effects of financing and innovation are important channels through which digital finance influences industrial environmental performance. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis shows that the beneficial influence of digital finance on the environmental performance of firms is enhanced when firms are smaller, have non-state ownership, are located in East China, and have a lower level of financial development. These findings expand upon the factors that influence corporate environmental performance and provide empirical evidence that heavy-polluting companies should fully grasp the opportunities of digital finance development and improve their environmental performance in order to achieve higher-quality development.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital finance
• environmental performance
• financing effect
• innovation effect

JEL:

• G21
• M14

Acknowledgement

We are grateful for helpful support and suggestions from Professor Chun-Ping Chang. We are solely responsible for any errors and omissions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical Approval

Ethics approval and consent to participate: Ethical Approval: Not applicable. All the authors listed have approved the manuscript that is enclosed and have consented to participate.

Consent for Publication

All the authors listed have approved the manuscript and agree to publish it if the paper is accepted.

Data Availability Statement

Yes, by request.

Notes

1. The definition of industry codes are as follows: Coal mining and washing industry, oil and gas mining, ferrous metal mining, non-ferrous metal mining, textile industry, leather, fur, feathers and their products and footwear industry, paper and paper products industry, petroleum processing, coking and nuclear fuel processing industry, chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing industry, chemical fiber manufacturing industry, rubber and plastic products industry, nonmetallic mineral products industry, ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industry, non-ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industry, electricity, heat production and supply industry.

Additional information

Funding

Hunan Provincial Department of Education Scientific Research Key Project [20A006]; Hunan Provincial Intelligent Accounting Research Center Postgraduate Special Project [21ckzx04]; Hunan Postgraduate Research Innovation Project [CX20220931].