Can Digital Financial Inclusion Promote Green Innovation in Heavily Polluting Companies?

This paper takes the China A-shares listed companies in heavy polluting industries from 2011 to 2020 as samples, combines the digital financial inclusion index to empirically examine the impacts of digital financial inclusion development on the green technology innovation of heavily polluting companies, and reveals its mechanism of action and its heterogeneity of the impacts of enterprises’ green technology innovation in different development stages. The empirical research results show that the development of digital financial inclusion is able to promote the green innovation of heavy-polluting enterprises. Its main manifestation is that the development of digital financial inclusion helps the increase of green patent applications of heavy-polluting enterprises. This conclusion is validated through the endogeneity and robustness tests. The test results of the mechanism of action show that digital financial inclusion promotes green innovation of enterprises by alleviating corporate financing constraints and financial mismatch problems. Further research results show that the role of digital financial inclusion in promoting green technology innovation in heavy-polluting enterprises is more pronounced in mature enterprises. Therefore, this study provides a theoretical basis for the development of digital financial inclusion to promote heavy-polluting enterprises to achieve green transition through green technology innovation, thus achieving the “dual carbon” goal.