关键词: 环境污染, 数字金融, 规模扩张, 结构转型, 技术进步

Abstract:

As a new feature of financial development, digital finance developed by relying on digital technology such as the Internet, big data and cloud computing helps to break “the financial exclusion” of small and micro enterprises and low-income groups practised by traditional financial institutions and alleviate the mismatch of financial resources caused by information asymmetry by providing equal, easily accessible and low-cost financial resources. Especially in the context of the rapid development of digital technology, digital finance is profoundly reshaping the social production and lifestyle, which inevitably affects the ecological environment. This paper aims to explore the environmental effect of digital finance development and its influence mechanism. First of all, the mechanism of digital finance influencing the environment is analyzed, and the theoretical analysis framework of digital finance influencing the environment is constructed from three perspectives of the scale expansion, the structural transformation and the technological progress. Then, on the basis of measuring provincial environmental comprehensive pollution, industrial structure transformation, technological progress, digital finance and other indexes, this paper empirically examines the environmental effect of China’s digital finance development and the paths of the scale expansion, the structure transformation and the technological progress. The empirical results show that the development of digital finance not only contributes to the reduction of comprehensive pollution emissions, but also has emission reduction effect on specific types of pollutant such as waste water, waste gas and solid waste. The results of sub-dimensional heterogeneity test indicate that both the coverage breadth and the use depth of digital finance help to reduce pollution emissions, while the digitized degree of financial resources has yet to play a role of pollution reduction. It suggests that we still need to further promote the development of digital technology with the integration of financial institutions, and also reveals that the current pollution reduction effect of digital finance is mainly realized by improving the coverage breadth and the use depth of digital finance. The results of mediating effect test show that digital finance with the characteristics of inclusiveness and low-threshold can help promote the middle-and low-end consumption, solidify the traditional extensive growth model, and lead to the expansion of the economic scale and the increase of pollution emissions. Digital finance helps to guide financial resources flow to the industry with higher productivity, drives the development of producer services such as transportation, logistics and warehousing, accelerates the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure, and reduces pollution emissions. Relying on the Internet, big data, cloud computing and other digital technologies, digital finance can effectively identify technological research and development risks, stimulate the development of small-and medium-sized innovative enterprises, improve the allocation efficiency and the production efficiency, and provide technical conditions for the green transformation of traditional polluting industries, thereby reducing pollution emissions. Therefore, China should develop digital finance as an important focus of its environmental policy, set up green funds, issue green bonds, promote green innovation in financial products, and deepen green reform of the financial market in order to improve the ecological environment, and accelerate the overall green transformation process of its economic and social development.

Key words: Environmental Pollution, Digital Finance, Scale Expansion, Structural Transformation, Technological Progress