IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v79y2025ics1544612325005434.html

Establishment of regional environmental courts, development of financial technology, and optimization of the business environment

Author

Listed:
  • Chen, ZiYan
  • Zhao, Tao

Abstract

In an era marked by the convergence of ecological civilization and digital economic expansion, this study examines the interplay between regional environmental courts (EC), financial technology (FT) advancements, and business environment optimization. Using data from 285 Chinese cities spanning 2017–2022, the analysis reveals that the establishment of regional EC positively contributes to improving the business environment. Moreover, the development of FT significantly amplifies this positive impact. An examination of the underlying mechanisms indicates that although the initial implementation of EC may intensify corporate financing constraints, advancements in FT effectively mitigate this challenge.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, ZiYan & Zhao, Tao, 2025. "Establishment of regional environmental courts, development of financial technology, and optimization of the business environment," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:79:y:2025:i:c:s1544612325005434
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2025.107280
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612325005434
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2025.107280?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Li, Wanhui & Wang, Shumin & Deng, Xinxia, 2024. "The impact of digital finance on business environment: Mediating role of industrial structural upgrading and moderating role of digital infrastructure," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 67(PA).
    2. Mengyu Li & Qian Zheng & Zicheng Zhang & Yu Zhao & Shi Chen, 2025. "Environmental justice and corporate green transition: a new perspective from environmental courts in China," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 1-36, February.
    3. Zhang, Qiuyue & Que, Jiangjing & Qin, Xiuting, 2023. "Regional financial technology and shadow banking activities of non-financial firms: Evidence from China," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    4. Zhang, Yongji & Lan, Minghui & Zhao, Yapu & Su, Zhi & Hao, Yu & Du, Heran, 2024. "Regional carbon emission pressure and corporate green innovation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 360(C).
    5. Guo, Xiaofang & Chen, Sicen & Liu, Chenlan, 2025. "Business environment optimization effects on enterprise environmental protection investment," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    6. Zhang, Wenting & Hamori, Shigeyuki, 2021. "Crude oil market and stock markets during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from the US, Japan, and Germany," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    7. Xie, Xueyan & Zhu, Xiaoyang, 2022. "FinTech and capital allocation efficiency: Another equity-efficiency dilemma?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    8. Zhu, Weidong & Zhang, Tianjiao & Wu, Yong & Li, Shaorong & Li, Zhimin, 2022. "Research on optimization of an enterprise financial risk early warning method based on the DS-RF model," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    9. Zhang, Qi & Yu, Zhi & Kong, Dongmin, 2019. "The real effect of legal institutions: Environmental courts and firm environmental protection expenditure," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    10. Qian Chen & Chuang Shen, 2024. "How FinTech Affects Bank Systemic Risk: Evidence from China," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 77-101, February.
    11. Gang Kou & Yang Lu, 2025. "FinTech: a literature review of emerging financial technologies and applications," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 11(1), pages 1-34, December.
    12. Dong, Xiao & Yu, Mingzhe, 2023. "Does FinTech development facilitate firms' innovation? Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    13. Chen, Shengqi & Zhang, Hong, 2021. "Does digital finance promote manufacturing servitization: Micro evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 856-869.
    14. Li, Wen & Peng, Qing, 2023. "Digital courts and corporate investment in sustainability: Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    15. Yuan, Huaxi & Zou, Longhui & Feng, Yidai, 2023. "How to achieve emission reduction without hindering economic growth? The role of judicial quality," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    16. Xiang, Xiaojian & Liu, Chuanjiang & Yang, Mian, 2022. "Who is financing corporate green innovation?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 321-337.
    17. Wen, Huwei & Zhong, Qiming & Lee, Chien-Chiang, 2022. "Digitalization, competition strategy and corporate innovation: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing listed companies," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    18. Qi, Xiulin & Wu, Zhifang & Xu, Jinqing & Shan, Biaoan, 2023. "Environmental justice and green innovation: A quasi-natural experiment based on the establishment of environmental courts in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhao, Wenqi & Toh, Moau Yong & Zhang, Yongmin, 2025. "The price of green justice: Environmental courts and cross-regional capital immobility," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 85(PA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Qiao, Nan & Xu, Bohan, 2025. "Green credit policy, media pressure, and corporate green innovation," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    2. Liu, Jiqing & Lv, Xiaojing & Zhang, Gui & Zhang, Meng, 2025. "Can fintech drive innovation in enterprise digital business models?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Lou, Chao & Xie, Shaojing, 2025. "Innovation in external supervision systems, business environment, and corporate financialization: a quasi-natural experiment based on the pilot program of prosecutorial administrative public interest litigation system," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(PA).
    4. Zeng, Wei & Tu, Yongqian & Juan, Xin & Tian, Grace (Li), 2025. "Financial regulation, digital currency, and risk management," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. Jiacai Xiong & Zelin Yang & Lijuan Xiao & Yushu Zhu, 2025. "Environmental judicial reform and corporate greenwashing: evidence from China’s environmental public interest litigation pilot," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-16, December.
    6. Wang, Jianying & Qi, Chengyu & Guo, Qing, 2024. "FinTech, industrial convergence, and farmers’ prosperity," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 67(PA).
    7. Ji, Heli & Yu, Zhihai & Tian, Grace (Li) & Wang, David (Han) & Wen, Yue, 2025. "Market competition, environmental, social and corporate governance investment, and enterprise green innovation performance," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    8. Chen, Zhenni & Li, Bin & Lou, Xinna & Liang, Yilan & Feng, Tong, 2025. "Is the increasing carbon pressure an incentive or obstacle to corporate creativity? Evidence from Chinese listed firms," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 186-201.
    9. Zhang, Huatao & Bi, Tao & Shen, Yunqiao & Tu, Sophia Zimeng, 2025. "The effects of intellectual property protection on corporate digital transformation," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    10. Zheng, Kaixin, 2025. "Do FinTech platforms amplify the wealth effect?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    11. Ding, Jingxuan & Luo, Jingwen & Xu, Xian, 2025. "How does Fintech shape the functioning of SMEs' risk managements? The case of face-scan payment," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    12. Abakah, Emmanuel Joel Aikins & Goodell, John W. & Sulong, Zunaidah & Abdullah, Mohammad, 2024. "Wavelet quantile correlation between DeFi assets and banking stocks," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    13. Liu, Chengcheng & Tian, Meng & Huang, Bai, 2025. "Volatility spillover dynamics between fintech and traditional financial industries and their rich determinants: New evidence from Chinese listed institutions," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    14. Qiao, Chengzhi, 2025. "Can banking concentration improve regional FinTech development?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    15. Pampurini, Francesca & Pezzola, Annagiulia & Quaranta, Anna Grazia, 2024. "Lending business models and FinTechs efficiency," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    16. Ren, Yu & Liu, Xiongfei & Zhu, Yi, 2025. "Can the development of digital finance and information transparency improve enterprise investment efficiency?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    17. Liu, Ji & Xu, Zheng & Zhang, Jing & Zhou, Kun, 2025. "Can market competition enhance the utilization of data elements? Analysis from the dual perspectives of managerial incentives and entrepreneurial orientation," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    18. Hasan, Morshadul & Hoque, Ariful & Abedin, Mohammad Zoynul & Gasbarro, Dominic, 2024. "FinTech and sustainable development: A systematic thematic analysis using human- and machine-generated processing," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 95(PC).
    19. Maiolini, Riccardo & Cappa, Francesco & Franco, Stefano & Quaratino, Giovanni Raimondo, 2024. "The impact of sustainable development goals in lending-based prosocial crowdfunding: A topic modeling analysis on the kiva platform," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 95(PB).
    20. Wen, Jialian & Song, Jiayi, 2025. "Executives' financial background, artificial intelligence empowerment, and corporate human resource management," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 85(PB).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:79:y:2025:i:c:s1544612325005434. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.