Can Government Attention to Fintech Enhance Inclusive Green Growth? Empirical Evidence from 284 Cities in China
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Abstract
Advancing Chinese-style modernization and narrowing developmental gaps call for inclusive green growth (IGG), a paradigm that jointly pursues economic advancement, social fairness, and ecological sustainability. As a cognitive resource, the degree to which governments prioritize Fintech can propel IGG by pooling information, guiding expectations, and rewarding innovation. Drawing on a balanced sample of 283 Chinese prefecture-level cities observed over 2011–2023, this study quantifies governmental Fintech priority through textual analysis of policy documents and gauges IGG with an entropy-weighted indicator system. A two-way fixed-effects panel specification is then estimated to trace how such priority shapes urban IGG. The estimates show that a heightened governmental focus on Fintech substantially lifts urban IGG, a conclusion that withstands a battery of endogeneity corrections and robustness diagnostics. Channel tests reveal green technological innovation and digital inclusive finance as two parallel transmission routes, whereas the regional stock of human capital reinforces the baseline relationship. The benefit is unevenly distributed, registering more strongly across eastern and central cities, larger urban agglomerations, and financially mature localities. Spatial econometric evidence further indicates that IGG is markedly clustered in geographic space, yet the gains from governmental Fintech focus remain chiefly confined to the originating city, diffusing only weakly to adjacent areas. On this basis, the paper advocates reinforcing governmental attention to Fintech, nurturing green innovation alongside digital financial inclusion, calibrating measures to local conditions, and deepening cross-regional collaboration to advance IGG.
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