Research On The Impact Of Digital Finance On Green Economic Development In Resource-based Cities

At the end of the 20 th century and the beginning of the 21 st century,the large-scale exploitation and utilization of mineral resources promoted the emergence of a number of various types of resource-based cities such as oil and coal cities.These cities have made historic contributions to the establishment of our industrial system and the rapid development of our economy and society.However,the high energy consumption and high emissions associated with extensive processing and production have led to a serious ecological and environmental crisis,threatening people’s lives,and resource-based cities are faced with severe challenges.At present,due to the law of life-cycle development of resource-based industries,about 80% of resource-based cities in China have entered the maturity and decline stage.To get rid of the "resource curse",green transformation and green development have become the inevitable path,and at the same time meet the current national requirements for high-quality development.Nevertheless,how to transform and how to promote regional green development have become a difficult problem for local governments.In recent years,with the rapid development of the Internet,as a new form of financial business,digital finance has advantages such as low cost and low threshold.It can not only expand the breadth of financial services but also optimize the allocation of financial resources.Current relevant studies show that digital finance can promote the development of regional green economy,but does this role also exist in resource-based cities? Given this,this paper empirically explores the impact of digital finance on green economic development in China’s resource-based cities on the basis of relevant analysis by previous scholars.First of all,on the basis of related theories,this paper sorted out the theoretical mechanism of digital finance affecting green economic development in resource-based cities through the collation of existing literature.Secondly,this paper selects the panel data of 88resource-based cities in 25 provinces of China from 2011 to 2020,citing the digital inclusive finance index compiled by Peking University as well as taking the green total factor productivity of each city as the proxy variable of the regional green economy development level,and carries out relevant empirical analysis from the national level.Thirdly,this paper tests the proposed mechanism of industrial structure upgrading,technological innovation,and financial agglomeration based on the intermediary effect model,and uses the sub-sample regression method to further explore the difference of the influence of digital finance on different economic belts,city types,and sub-dimensions.In the end,considering the possible spatial correlation and spatial spillover,this paper tries to introduce spatial econometric models.The results of this paper show that: Firstly,at the national level,the development of digital finance contributes to the improvement of the development level of the green economy in resource-based cities,and there is a significant positive correlation between them.Secondly,the three subdimensions of digital finance all contribute to the overall positive effect.Thirdly,considering the differences in regional level and resource-based city types,the impact of digital finance is heterogeneous.Fourthly,the development of digital finance promotes the generation of the financial aggregation effect,helps improve the efficiency of financial resource allocation,provides financial support for urban technological innovation and industrial structure upgrading,and thus promotes the green development of resource-based cities.Fifthly,based on the spatial econometric regression results,there may be spatial spillover between neighboring regions.The green development of a city is not only affected by the factors of the city itself,but also affected by the external impact of neighboring cities.On this basis,this paper puts forward corresponding countermeasures and suggestions in the aspects of digital financial system construction,green industry system cultivation,and high-tech personnel training in resource-based cities.