Analysis reveals digital inclusive finance significantly boosts urban green development, highlighting economic and environmental mechanisms.
Based on the panel data of Chinese cities during 2013 and 2021, this study establishes a panel fixed-effect model and a panel threshold model to empirically investigate the effect of digital inclusive finance on urban green development, as well as the mechanism, threshold characteristics and heterogeneity. The study reveals the following four points: (1) Digital inclusive finance can significantly drive urban green development, whose coverage breadth has more prominent promotional effect on urban green development compared to the usage depth and the digitization level. (2) In terms of the acting mechanism, the current effect of digital inclusive finance on urban green development is mainly achieved through promoting economic development and environmental protection, while its promotion effect on social progress is not yet significant. (3) The impact of digital inclusive finance on urban green development varies depending on the agglomeration degree of urban digital economy and its geographical location. In non-agglomeration areas of digital economy and western regions, the promotion effect of digital inclusive finance on urban green development is more obvious. (4) The promotion effect of digital inclusive finance on urban green development exhibits non-linear characteristics with different levels of urban economic development and digital inclusive finance development.
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Yun-qin et al. (2025) studied this question.