The Impact Of Green Credit On Corporate Investment Behavior And Sustainable Development

Since the 1980s,China’s economy has continued to grow at a high rate.Behind the rising GDP is China’s over-reliance on an extended development path,which has led to a growing contradiction between economic growth and environmental pollution.Transforming the economic development model is an inevitable requirement for China’s further development.As the microcarrier of macroeconomic growth,enterprises are responsible for environmental deterioration.Social environmental pollution is closely related to the investment behavior of enterprises caused by the unreasonable allocation of social credit resources.The heavily polluting enterprises have always been the key enterprises in the allocation of credit resources of their high production capacity and heavy mortgage assets.The excessive allocation of credit resources enables heavily polluting enterprises to have abundant cash flow,which promotes their continuous investment.This extensive investment mode continuously aggravates the level of environmental pollution.Therefore,the only way to achieve green sustainable development in China is to change the investment-driven development mode of heavily polluting enterprises.To achieve the above goals,the Chinese government has implemented a variety of environmental regulations in recent years.These regulations have played a positive role in controlling environmental pollution.As a useful supplement to the traditional means of environmental regulation,the Chinese government has implemented green credit.Green credit requires banks to incorporate factors such as environmental protection into their credit decisions,aiming to fundamentally solve the environmental pollution problems caused by the blind investment-driven development mode of heavily polluting enterprises.As an important tool to regulate the allocation of resources among enterprises,green credit can guide heavily polluting enterprises to change their investment methods and promote their high-quality development.However,in practice,the final implementation effect of green credit is still affected by a variety of factors.Then,can green credit change the blind investment-driven development mode of heavily polluting enterprises,and what impact will it have on the scale and structure of corporate investment?How does green credit affect the investment direction of enterprises?Can green credit promote the sustainable development of micro-enterprises?To solve the above problems,this paper follows the research thoughts of "green creditinvestment behavior--sustainable development of enterprises",and explores the impact of green credit on corporate investment decision-making and sustainable development.The main research conclusions are as follows:First,based on identifying the participants of green credit,this paper constructs an evolutionary game model,uses the numerical simulation method to simulate the dynamic evolution trajectory of green credit game strategy,and carries out data verification.Firstly,the evolutionary game mechanism analysis found that the lack of government support would lead to the failure of green credit;When the government gives strong support and banks respond positively,enterprises will consciously implement the production strategy of environmental governance and technological improvement,forming an idealized game equilibrium strategy of "government guidance,bank response,and enterprise execution".Secondly,from the perspective of green governance,the empirical analysis shows that green credit can promote heavily polluting enterprises to become greener in their investment direction by guiding the direction of green governance.Moreover,environmental regulations can significantly enhance the above effects.However,it should be noted that under the pressure of green credit,although enterprises have increased their investment in environmental protection,the quality of environmental governance has not improved significantly.Secondly,this paper shows that green credit has a significant incentive effect on corporate innovation behavior,and can promote the transformation of corporate production mode from labor-intensive to technology-intensive.In addition,due to the resource constraints caused by green credit,heavily polluting enterprises generally experience a decline in innovation performance.But,corporate digitalization can significantly reduce the decline of innovation performance.Furthermore,both government innovation subsidies and environmental regulations can promote the innovation transformation of heavily polluting enterprises.In general,green credit has improved the total factor productivity of enterprises.Second,from the perspective of credit resource reallocation,this paper discusses the impact of green credit on corporate investment scale and investment structure.First of all,this paper found that the credit restriction effect and the risk aversion effect lead to a reduction in the investment scale of heavily polluting enterprises after green credit.Further analysis shows that:In the industry dimension,green credit optimizes the investment structure of enterprises,focusing on reducing the investment scale of heavily polluting enterprises with low productivity;On the regional dimension,the investment of heavily polluting enterprises has a crowding-out effect,and green credit can alleviate the crowding out of heavily polluting enterprises in the investment scale of other enterprises in the region.Besides,this paper shows that green credit will make enterprises’ investments more inclined to financial assets.Through the motivation test,it is found that the motivation for saving capital is insufficient to explain this phenomenon.The investment structure of enterprises changes mainly because of profit-seeking requirements.In addition,financial asset investment of heavily polluting enterprises has a significant crowding-out effect on fixed asset investment and will bring about structural changes in corporate income.Third,under the condition that green credit affects enterprises’ investment behavior,this paper discusses the impact of green credit on enterprises’ sustainable development from the three dimensions of economy,environment and risk.First of all,in the economic dimension,the research finds that after the implementation of green credit,the investment scale of heavily polluting enterprises decrease and the investment in research and development increase,which harm the enterprise benefits.The financial asset and green investment are conducive to the improvement of enterprise benefits.In general,green credit reduces the operating benefits of enterprises.At the same time,green credit can increase its revenue by passing on part of the cost to consumers.Secondly,in the environmental dimension,it is found that green credit can improve the environmental performance of heavily polluting enterprises,and this promoting effect is particularly prominent in enterprises with greater external media attention pressure and a smaller separation rate of the two rights.Finally,in the risk dimension,the study found that,driven by the credit risk control of the banks at the debt supply end,although green credit reduced the operating benefit of enterprises,the debt default risk of heavily polluting enterprises was significantly reduced,The better the corporate governance structure and the more developed the local economy,the lower the debt default risk after the implementation of green credit.Moreover,it is found that in the capital market,the implementation of green credit policy leads to a decrease in financial media’s attention to heavily polluting enterprises,which is consistent with the "media attention shift" hypothesis.At the same time,under the influence of factors such as increasing financing constraints and declining profits,corporate managers are more inclined to "cover up" bad news,which is in line with the hypothesis of "information manipulation".Under the dual effects of the decline of media supervision and the information manipulation of managers,the stock price collapse risk after the implementation of green credit increases.The innovation of this study is mainly reflected in the following four aspects:First,based on the evolutionary game method,this study analyzes the mechanism of green credit affecting the direction of enterprise investment from the theoretical level,and uses empirical data to explore the influence of green credit on the direction of enterprise investment from the perspectives of green governance and transformation and upgrading,which is beneficial to expand the research on the change of enterprise investment direction after the implementation of green credit.Relevant researches mainly focus on the empirical test level and pay little attention to the theoretical analysis of enterprise decision-making in green credit.Moreover,in the empirical study,from the perspective of green governance,whether enterprises will make short-term strategic environmental governance behavior is still debatable.From the perspective of upgrading,due to differences in analysis methods and definition methods of heavily polluting enterprises,the conclusions on whether green credit can promote enterprise transformation are not unified.Therefore,to make up for the shortcomings,this paper uses the evolutionary game method to analyze the mechanism of green credit in promoting enterprise environmental governance and technological improvement.Furthermore,empirical data are used to test the enterprise investment direction after the implementation of green credit,It makes theoretical innovation for understanding the logic of enterprise investment direction in green credit.Second,based on the perspective of resource reallocation,this paper analyzes the influence of green credit on enterprise investment scale and the optimization of investment structure at the industrial and regional levels,providing empirical evidence for understanding the investment governance effect of green credit enriching the existing research.Sufficient cash flow stimulates the blind investment expansion of heavily polluting enterprises,which causes environmental pollution problems.Green credit can control environmental pollution from the source of enterprise capital availability.As an asymmetric financial environmental regulation tool for the reallocation of social credit resources,the resource reallocation effect of green credit may cause a biased flow of investment quota of enterprises in industries and regions.Therefore,the optimization effect of investment structure caused by green credit deserves attention.However,most of the existing literature focus on the direct effect of green credit policies on enterprise investment scale,but ignores the adjustment of investment structure based on the resource reallocation function of green credit,and the mechanism of green credit’s influence on investment scale is not fully discussed.Therefore,based on the resource reallocation function of green credit,this paper analyzes the adjustment of green credit to the investment structure of enterprises at the industry level;At the regional level,it is the first time to explore the crowding-out effect of investment caused by heavily polluting enterprises and the role of green credit in this effect.Therefore,this paper provides innovative research ideas,which is a useful supplement to existing research.Third,this paper discusses the preference of corporate investment structure in green credit and constructs a more overall framework to examine how green credit affects corporate investment structure.The existing literature shows that green credit has led to a decline in the level of corporate investment,ignoring the objective fact that the investment in financial assets of heavily polluting enterprises has risen,and cannot outline the overall trend of the investment structure of enterprises.In addition,the existing research has explained the financial investment structure preference of enterprises from the perspective of economic policy uncertainty and management characteristics,and few scholars have explored the financial preference behavior under green financial pressure.To make up for these deficiencies,this paper empirically tests the impact of green credit on corporate investment structure.Furthermore,this paper tests the motives of financial asset investment,and finds that the reason why the enterprise investment structure tends to be financed is the demand for pursuing profits.Moreover,financial asset investment has led to structural changes in corporate income.In general,this paper makes up for the deficiencies of existing research.Fourth,given the impact of green credit on enterprise investment behavior,from the three dimensions of economy,environment,and risk,this study comprehensively investigates the impact of green credit on enterprise sustainable development,providing a new perspective for exploring the microeconomic consequences of green credit.Enterprise sustainable development is an important goal of green credit implementation.A comprehensive review of the existing literature shows that most relevant studies focus on the impact of green credit on micro-enterprises environmental governance behavior from the environmental dimension,while there is relatively little research on the consequences of environmental governance.In the economic dimension,relevant studies mainly analyze the direct effect of green credit on enterprise performance,but the research conclusions are not uniform,and there is a lack of discussion on the specific coping behaviors of enterprises when benefits decline.In addition,the risk is an important content that can not be ignored in the sustainable development of enterprises.However,few existing studies have explored the impact of green credit from the dimension of enterprise risk.Based on the perspective of corporate profitability,green development ability and anti-risk ability,this paper systematically explores the impact of green credit on the sustainable development of enterprises,and carries out theoretical analysis and empirical test on its driving factors,influence mechanism,and asymmetric influence.The conclusion enriches the understanding of the relationship between green credit and the development of micro-enterprises,and sheds light on the research on the economic consequences of green credit.