Abstract
Green finance is not just a global trend, but it has become an important channel for industrialized countries to achieve sustainable growth. However, few studies have discussed the environmental governance effects of green finance from the micro-firm level. Based on the data of Chinese A-share listed firms in heavily polluting industries, we, combining with property rights and environmental regulation, empirically research the influence of green finance on corporate environmental responsibility (CER) performance. Results indicate that green finance has a significant negative effect on the environmental responsibility of heavily polluting firms. The result remains after a series of robustness tests. In addition, property rights and environmental regulation play a moderating role in the above relationship. The negative impact of green finance on CER is stronger in private firms and firms in areas with low environmental regulation intensity. Moreover, we observe that green finance decreases the CER performance of heavily polluting firms by increasing financing constraints, reducing environmental investment, and diminishing technological innovation. This study identifies the external factors that influence CER and also provides implications and theoretical support for the government to improve the setting and the implementation of green finance policy in the future.
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Data availability
The datasets used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors express gratitude to all those who helped us during the writing of the paper and acknowledge the advice of the anonymous reviewers to improve the quality of this study.
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This study was funded by grants from the National Social Science Foundation of China (21BJY121).
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Ling He: methodology, project administration, software, and writing original draft. Tingyong Zhong: data curation, investigation, formal analysis, and editing. Shengdao Gan: resources, validation, review, and editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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He, L., Zhong, T. & Gan, S. Green finance and corporate environmental responsibility: evidence from heavily polluting listed enterprises in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 74081–74096 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21065-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21065-5