Digital Finance, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Corporate Innovation

Abstract

Innovation is the key to promoting high-quality development of the Chinese economy in the new era, and the core driving force for accelerating the construction of a new pattern of "double-cycle" development. As a new form of financial business, digital finance can not only broaden the breadth and depth of financial services, but also optimize the allocation of financial resources, improve the efficiency of financial services, and promote the improvement of the technological innovation level of enterprises. The fulfillment of social responsibility by enterprises can establish a good social reputation and obtain the information and material resources needed for technological innovation from various stakeholders, which also means the redistribution of limited resources. In this paper, the panel data of Shanghai-Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2021 is selected as the research sample, and the two-way fixed model is used to examine the relationship between digital finance, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and enterprise innovation. The results show that: (1) the development of digital finance promotes the innovation and development of enterprises; (2) the substitution effect of corporate social responsibility and digital finance, and corporate social responsibility weakens the positive effect of digital finance on enterprise innovation. Combined with the conclusion, this paper holds that the government and financial institutions should jointly promote the development of digital finance, enterprises should reasonably allocate the internal resources of social responsibility and enterprise innovation, and the regulatory authorities should build an efficient and perfect supervision system. This paper not only provides useful inspiration for improving the digital financial supervision system and enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities, but also provides empirical basis for enterprises' innovation and development.