Can Digital Finance Improve Corporate Environmental Performance? Evidence from Heavy Polluting Listed Companies in China

In the context of the digital transformation of China’s financial system and the synergistic growth of its economic environment, this research explores the impact of digital finance development on the environmental performance of enterprises. Through empirical analysis of data gathered from A-share heavy polluters from 2011 to 2020, our findings show that digital finance effectively improves the environmental performance of heavy polluters. The conclusions remain robust after controlling for endogeneity issues and running a series of robustness tests. The mechanism test reveals that the effects of financing and innovation are important channels through which digital finance influences industrial environmental performance. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis shows that the beneficial influence of digital finance on the environmental performance of firms is enhanced when firms are smaller, have non-state ownership, are located in East China, and have a lower level of financial development. These findings expand upon the factors that influence corporate environmental performance and provide empirical evidence that heavy-polluting companies should fully grasp the opportunities of digital finance development and improve their environmental performance in order to achieve higher-quality development.