Untangling the causal mechanisms and spatial dynamics of digital financial development's impact on energy intensity: insights from panel data of Chinese provinces.

The prime focus of the present investigation delves into the linkage between digital financial services and energy intensity within the geographic confines of China, utilizing provincial-level panel data spanning from 2011 to 2021. Digital finance has rapidly developed due to changes in information technology, and its role in achieving green transformation, reducing energy consumption, and lowering energy intensity in Chinese society is critical. By conducting empirical analysis utilizing diverse models, we have tested our hypotheses and found that digital finance's improvement can contribute to the reduction in energy intensity at the regional level while still considering endogeneity concerns. This effect is mediated by the promotion of technological innovation and the facilitation of green development in industries. Digital finance's impact on energy intensity is contingent upon resource endowments, such as the level of traditional financial development and the degree of information. Moreover, digital finance's adverse impact on energy intensity becomes more pronounced beyond certain threshold values. However, digital finance can increase energy intensity in neighboring regions through spatial spillover effects. Drawing upon our findings, we recommend bolstering the development of digital finance, augmenting the capability for autonomous innovation, and devising specialized strategies for digital finance advancement to fully harness the potential of digital finance in curbing energy intensity. This study interprets the value of digital finance from the new perspective of energy intensity. By exploring the internal links between digital finance and energy intensity, the study enriches the research results on the impact of digital finance on energy intensity.

Analysis of financial support efficiency and influencing factors of listed seed companies from the perspective of energy consumption and carbon emissions.

The seed industry has a prominent role in strengthening ecological stability and national food security as it provides the basic ground for agriculture sector. In the current research, the effectiveness of financial support provided to listed seed enterprises and its influencing factors from the perspectives of energy consumption and carbon emissions are examined using a three-stage DEA-Tobit model. The dataset for the underlined study variables mainly comes from the financial data published by 32 listed seed enterprises and the China Energy Statistical Yearbook from 2016 to 2021. In order to make the results more accurate, the influence of external environmental factors such as economic development level, total energy consumption, and total carbon emission on listed seed enterprises are excluded. The results revealed that the mean value of financial support efficiency of listed seed enterprises increased significantly after excluding the influence of external environmental and random factors. External environmental factors such as regional energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission played an important role in the process of the financial system supporting the development of listed seed enterprises. The development of some listed seed enterprises with high financial support efficiency came at the cost of high local carbon dioxide emission and high energy consumption. Internal factors such as operating profit, equity concentration, financial structure, and enterprise size are the key intra-firm factors that affect the efficiency of financial support for listed seed enterprises. Thus, it is suggested that enterprises must pay attention to the environmental performance to reach a win-win situation in reducing and improving the energy consumption and financial performance, respectively. Similarly, the improvement of energy use efficiency through endogenous and external innovation should be prioritized to achieve sustainable economic development.