A Heterogeneous Study Of The Carbon Emission Effect Of Digital Finance

Reducing carbon emissions is the key path to the goal of " carbon peaking and carbon neutrality" and an inherent requirement for China’s high-quality economic development.As the basis for building a market-oriented technological innovation system and the core element of modern economic operation,finance is an important tool for the government to promote economic development and environmental governance.In the context of a digital and low-carbon society,it is important to study how to use digital finance as the engine of development and technological innovation and industrial structure optimization as the main means to reduce carbon emissions to help achieve the goal of carbon neutrality,as well as to contribute to the sustainable and healthy development of digital finance.At present,there are still differences in the development level of digital finance among cities in China,but the national,inter-regional and intra-regional differences are decreasing year by year;the overall carbon emission differences in China are also decreasing year by year.At present,scholars have achieved many results on the relationship between digital finance and carbon emissions,but there are still insufficient studies on the influence mechanism.There are also fewer articles that take cities as the research level and put digital finance,industrial structure optimization,technological innovation,and carbon emissions in the same research framework;in addition,further depth is needed on the heterogeneous impact of digital finance on carbon emissions.This paper takes the impact of digital finance development on urban carbon emissions as the main line of research,and adopts the panel data of 265 prefecture-level cities from2011 to 2020.Firstly,the relationship between digital finance and carbon emissions is studied by constructing a benchmark regression model,and further investigates whether there is a nonlinear relationship between digital finance and carbon emissions on the basis of systematic GMM test,and the robustness and endogeneity of the model are verified by combining endogeneity tests and robustness tests.Then the mechanism and path of influence of digital finance on carbon emissions are analyzed through the mediating effect test,and finally the heterogeneity test such as group regression is used to analyze the variability of the influence of digital finance on carbon emissions.It is found that: first,the impact of digital finance development on urban carbon emissions is negative,human advanced significantly reduce urban carbon emissions,and foreign investment level,energy consumption efficiency and infrastructure construction level increase urban carbon emissions.Secondly,digital finance can significantly reduce carbon emissions through technological innovation and industrial structure optimization,among which the effect of technological innovation on carbon emission reduction is more obvious.Third,the impact of digital finance on carbon emissions is heterogeneous.Regardless of whether the city is a pilot zone for financial inclusion reform or the province where the pilot zone is located,digital finance significantly reduces carbon emissions in urban agglomerations,but the effect is stronger for the provinces where the pilot zone for financial inclusion reform or the pilot zone is located;for cities in different zones,digital finance significantly promotes carbon emissions in northern China,has insignificant effects on southern China and northwest China,and has significant reducing effects on other regions For city clusters classified according to whether they are resource-based cities,digital finance significantly increases carbon emissions in declining cities,and significantly decreases carbon emissions in both growing-mature cities and regenerating-non-resource cities;for city clusters of different sizes,the development of digital finance significantly promotes carbon emissions in mega-cities,significantly decreases carbon emissions in megacities and large cities,and significantly reduces carbon emissions in small and medium-sized cities.impact is insignificant.Digital finance can significantly reduce carbon emissions in cities east of the Hu line,but not significantly reduce carbon emissions in cities west of this dividing line;in addition,digital finance can significantly reduce carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt,the Yellow River Basin and regions other than BTH Coordinated Development and the Greater Bay Area.In order to create a resource-saving and environment-friendly society,this paper proposes the following policy recommendations: first,implement the national strategy of regional differentiation to promote the development of digital finance and realize a diversified pattern of urban digital finance development;second,promote the implementation of national innovation policies and explore a multi-dimensional path to enhance enterprise technological innovation;third,use the market to promote the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure and accelerate the transformation of enterprises;fourth,accelerate the urbanization process in each region to attract the inflow of innovative talents and reduce carbon emissions.