THE IMPACT OF GREEN CREDIT POLICY ON CORPORATE GREEN TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION —A STUDY BASED ON CHINESE LISTED COMPANIES

Abstract

With the continuous development of China's social economy, environmental protection issues have become increasingly prominent, and green and sustainable development has become an important topic. Green technology innovation is an important way to achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, and it helps to promote the clean energy structure and the low-carbon transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure. The key to energy conservation and emission reduction for enterprises lies in technological innovation, which requires both financial and talent support. At the same time, enterprises generally face financial constraints and insufficient innovation motivation in the process of green technology innovation. According to the "2024 China Patent Survey Report," among enterprises that have not carried out green technology innovation, 42.7% indicated that the lack of necessary R&D funds was the main obstacle to their green technology innovation. This paper takes the "Green Credit Guidelines" promulgated in 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment, selects A-share listed companies from 2006 to 2024 as the initial sample, uses sustainable development theory as the overall analytical framework, and employs a difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of the implementation of green credit policies on the green technology innovation activities of listed companies. The study shows that: (1) Green credit policies have a significant positive impact on promoting green innovation activities of enterprises, and their promotion effect on green utility model patents is more significant than that on green invention patents; (2) The mediation effect analysis results show that the mediation effect of the level of environmental information disclosure is particularly significant; (3) The moderating mechanism analysis shows that institutional investor shareholding plays a key moderating role in the relationship between green credit policies and corporate green technology innovation; (4) The heterogeneity analysis reveals that green credit policies have a more significant promoting effect on the green innovation activities of state-owned enterprises, large enterprises, manufacturing enterprises, and capital-intensive enterprises. Based on the above conclusions, this paper proposes the following recommendations: the government should continue to optimize the green credit system framework, strengthen policy xiv guidance and supervision, and coordinate the development of enterprises of all sizes; banks should accurately assess enterprises' needs for green technology innovation, increase credit support for green innovation enterprises, and establish a sound green credit risk management system; enterprises should increase investment in green technology research and development, strengthen environmental information disclosure, optimize their financing structure according to their own characteristics, and formulate green technology innovation strategies.