Impact of digital finance on enterprise green innovation: From the perspective of information asymmetry, consumer demand and factor market distortions

Abstract

The study endeavors to empirically assess the influence of digital finance on promoting enterprise green innovation, while simultaneously probing its underlying mechanisms, by leveraging panel data from a sample of 2071 China A-share listed firms over an extensive time frame spanning from 2011 to 2021. The findings demonstrate that digital finance plays a crucial role in promoting enterprise green innovation, and that both the coverage breadth and usage depth of digital finance have a significant effect on enterprise green innovation, but the digitization level of digital finance also has a non-significant effect on enterprise green innovation, and the conclusions hold even after multiple robustness tests and consideration of endogeneity issues. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis reveals that digital finance is only has a significant promoting effect on green innovation of SMEs, and high-tech enterprises. After conducting the mechanism analysis, it has been noted that digital finance serves as a facilitator in promoting green innovation in enterprises by reducing information asymmetry, stimulating consumer demand, and attenuating the distortion of regional factor markets. Intellectual property protection and environmental governance will strengthen the positive impact of digital finance on enterprises’ green innovation. The research results provide policy implications for the green development of digital finance enabling enterprises.