The Impact Of Digital Finance Development On Urban Carbon Emissions

To reach a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 is a profound and widespread systemic change in China’s society,and a key link to promote sustainable development and green economic growth.To reach the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality,we must rely on the strength of society as a whole.As a new economic growth engine,digital finance plays an important role in this process.Digital finance is a new financial service model that combines financial services and digital technology,and its impact on carbon emissions has been less discussed.Digital finance,as a combination of financial services and digital means,is less discussed in terms of its impact on carbon emissions.Based on the Digital Inclusive Finance Index of 282 cities in China from 2011 to 2020 published by the Digital Finance Center of Peking University,this paper collected the carbon emissions generated by electricity,gas,liquefied petroleum gas and energy consumption of each city in each year through the statistical yearbook data published by the National Bureau of Statistics of China,and calculated the carbon dioxide production of the city accordingly.Carbon emissions per capita are used as the explained variable to indicate the level of carbon emissions in a city.First,the benchmark impact of digital finance on urban carbon emissions is tested by the spatial Dubin model.The results show that,in general,a 1% increase in digital finance will lead to a 0.58% reduction in urban per capita carbon emissions,while the development of digital finance has no significant effect on the nearby cities.Then,this paper conducted robustness test by replacing spatial weight matrix,switching panel data,and rearranging dependent and independent variables.In order to solve the endogeneity problem,explanatory variables with a lag of one stage were used to replace them.Test results and endogeneity discussion results showed that the results obtained in this paper were robust.In addition,this paper also analyzes the heterogeneity of digital finance by different dimensions,local samples and time samples.The results show that among the three sub-dimensions,the depth of use and the degree of digitization significantly promote the decrease of per capita carbon emissions in the city,while the coverage significantly promotes the increase of per capita carbon emissions in the city.The development of digital finance has significantly reduced the per capita carbon emissions in eastern cities,but significantly increased the per capita carbon emissions in central regions.The development of digital finance has a significant effect on the reduction of per capita carbon emissions within urban agglomerations,but has no significant effect on non-urban agglomerations.Two major events of digital finance have had a significant impact on reducing carbon emissions in cities.Thirdly,the intermediary effect model is used to empirically test that digital finance can reduce the per capita carbon emissions of cities by easing financing constraints,improving the level of entrepreneurship and technological innovation.Improving the level of entrepreneurship is a partial intermediary,while easing the financing constraints and improving the level of technological innovation is a complete intermediary.Finally,according to the results obtained in this paper,policy suggestions are put forward from the aspects of further promoting the development of digital inclusive finance,attaching importance to the exchange and cooperation of carbon emission reduction between cities,and exerting digital dividends according to the specific conditions.