Research Center of the Central China for Economic and Social Development, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China.
School of Business, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Aug 18;19(16):10255. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191610255.
Improving urban comprehensive carbon emission performance (CCEP) is the inevitable choice for China's low-carbon development. With the continuous integration of digital technology and financial elements, the development of urban digital finance has also been significantly improved. To further explore the impact of urban digital finance on urban low-carbon development, using the data of 281 cities in China from 2011 to 2019, this paper firstly evaluates the urban CCEP, and further empirically investigates how digital finance influences CCEP. The empirical results show that: (1) Digital finance significantly improves the urban CCEP, and after conducting robustness tests and addressing the endogeneity issue, the above conclusion is robust. (2) For the sub-indicators, there is a U-shaped relationship between the coverage breadth of digital finance and CCEP. Moreover, the improvement of usage depth and digital support services could promote CCEP. (3) The channel tests indicate that digital finance improves the CCEP mainly by promoting green technology innovation and the development of urban tertiary industry. Meantime, digital finance has a stronger impact on improving CCEP in cities with more developed traditional finance, and the positive effect is significant in non-old industrial base cities and a two-control zone. Finally, this paper puts forward relevant policy suggestions.
提高城市综合碳排放量绩效（CCEP）是中国低碳发展的必然选择。随着数字技术和金融要素的不断融合，城市数字金融的发展也得到了显著提升。为了进一步探讨城市数字金融对城市低碳发展的影响，本文利用 2011 年至 2019 年中国 281 个城市的数据，首先评估了城市的 CCEP，然后进一步实证研究了数字金融如何影响 CCEP。实证结果表明：（1）数字金融显著提高了城市 CCEP，并且在进行稳健性检验和解决内生性问题后，上述结论是稳健的。（2）对于子指标，数字金融的覆盖广度与 CCEP 之间存在 U 型关系。此外，使用深度和数字支持服务的提高可以促进 CCEP。（3）渠道测试表明，数字金融主要通过促进绿色技术创新和城市第三产业发展来提高 CCEP。同时，数字金融在传统金融发展更为发达的城市中对提高 CCEP 的影响更大，并且在非老工业基地城市和两控区的积极影响更为显著。最后，本文提出了相关政策建议。
