Abstract
Green finance integrates the concept of environmental governance into the financial industry, which is conducive to sustainable development. Applying the mediating effect model, this paper investigates the effect of green finance on urban haze pollution and explores the mediating role of technological innovation of enterprises between them. Based on a sample of 639 enterprises in China over 2016–2019, a significantly negative effect of green finance on urban haze pollution is found. An increase of one standard deviation in green finance decreases PM2.5 concentration by 8.8 μg/m3, ceteris paribus. Further, green finance may improve environmental quality by promoting technological innovation. Considering the heterogeneity of enterprise ownership, this mediating effect exists in non-state-owned enterprises, while it cannot be observed in state-owned enterprises. This study proposes a new solution for pollution: using green financial tools to promote environmentally friendly technological progress.
Highlights
Since the reform and opening-up, China’s economy has made remarkable achievements
This paper introduces a new micro perspective of enterprise technology innovation and explores the mechanism of how green finance influences haze pollution and verifies the mediation role of enterprise innovation technology, while the existing research mainly focuses on the macro level
This article constructs a theoretical framework, in which the enterprise technology innovation mediates the impact of green finance on haze pollution, provides empirical evidence based on the panel data from 2016 to 2019 at the urban level
Summary
The development mode of high pollution and high energy consumption has brought environmental pollution and ecological damage, especially the air pollution represented by haze, which has a serious impact on human life due to its severe health hazards and long duration. In July 2016, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed the amendment of Law of the People’s Republic of China on Conserving Energy, clearly proposing that the government departments should guide financial institutions to increase credit support for energy-saving projects and provide preferential loans for qualified projects such as energy-saving technology research and development, energy-saving new product production and energy-saving technological transformation. Under the guidance of such policies, China’s green credit, green bonds, green venture capital funds and green stock index have developed rapidly [3]
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