Research on innovative mechanisms of financial agglomeration enabling green coordinated development in the Yangtze River Delta of China

Exploring innovative mechanisms for financial agglomeration affecting the green coordinated development of China's Yangtze River Delta is important for the city to take advantage of financial and innovative resources to promote high-quality green development. Using panel data from 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region from 2003 to 2019, the intermediate effects model and spatial Durbin model are conducted to deeply explore the impact of financial agglomeration on coordinated green development and the intermediary role of innovation. Results show that, first, financial agglomeration can drive green technology innovation to significantly improve the coordinated development of “production greening - social optimization - environmental protection deepening”. Second, financial agglomeration significantly improves the green coordinated development in neighboring areas through inter-city innovative spatial connections, and the spatial spillover effect tends to decay with the critical point of the maximum impact range at 240 km. Third, the intermediate mechanism of green technology innovation performs well in the high-level financial agglomeration and financial capital agglomeration areas. The Banking and securities industries are the leading factors in financial capital agglomeration. Low-level financial agglomeration and financial personnel agglomeration cannot play the “driving green” role of the innovation mechanism.