Does Green Finance Contribute to Corporate Technological Innovation? The Moderating Role of Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

Technological innovation fundamentally drives sustainable economic development, and green finance provides an institutional guarantee for technological innovation. In this study, we obtained the data from 31 provinces of China during 2010–2019 to set up a green finance indicator system following the entropy method. The focal points in this paper are investigating the relationship regarding green finance and corporate technological innovation, and whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) strengthens such relationship. To do so, we matched the data of non-financial listed companies. The results are as follows: (1) Green finance can significantly enhance corporate technological innovation, and CSR has a positive moderating effect on this relationship between green finance and corporate technological innovation. (2) Based on the results of heterogeneity analysis, the positive impacts regarding green finance over technological innovation are more significant in larger companies, and companies in more economically developed eastern regions. More notably, green finance played a more significant role before 2016 than after. This study offers insights to future references for analyzing the green finance over economic sustainable development characterized by technological innovation.