Xinhao Huang

With climate risk and sustainable development dominating global policy agendas, a key question for regulators and researchers alike is whether and under what conditions fintech development is associated with improved corporate ESG performance. Using A-share listed firms in China from 2011 to 2024, this paper builds a city-level fintech index from Baidu News advanced search records and links it to firm-level ESG and financial data. Our baseline estimates confirm that fintech development significantly improves corporate ESG performance. This core finding remains robust across lagged regressors, an ordered logit specification, additional industry fixed effects, the exclusion of the 2020 to 2022 pandemic window, and a spherical-distance-to-Hangzhou instrumental variable. Mechanism tests reveal two complementary channels: fintech eases financing frictions and stimulates green innovation. Further analyses are conducted to explore boundary conditions. Both management shareholding and spatial competition exert direct positive effects on ESG performance, yet their interactions with fintech are significantly negative, pointing to a substitution rather than complementary relationship. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect is more pronounced among state-owned enterprises, large firms, non-high-tech and labor-intensive industries, growth-stage firms, and firms in the eastern region. Our results offer differentiated policy implications for strengthening digital infrastructure, refining financing arrangements for growth-stage and SMEs, and calibrating region- and life-cycle-sensitive regulatory frameworks.

With the strategic background of accelerating the transformation of the low-carbon economy in China, how to better help the new energy automobile industry realize green and high-quality development under the goal of “dual-carbon” with the strengthening of science and technology has become one of the most important issues nowadays, and it is of great significance to explore the relationship between financial technology (fintech) and the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of the new energy automobile (NEV) industry. Using panel data from NEV companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets between 2011 and 2022, this study applies text mining techniques to construct a fintech index and analyze the transmission mechanisms through which fintech influences ESG performance. The findings show that fintech directly improves ESG outcomes for NEV companies, a result that remains robust across a series of validation tests. The analysis reveals that fintech reduces financing constraints and enhances corporate environmental information disclosure, which in turn drives better ESG performance. Furthermore, the impact of fintech is particularly pronounced in state-owned enterprises, large-scale firms, and technologically advanced NEV companies, as evidenced by heterogeneity analysis. This study provides empirical insights into fintech’s role in advancing sustainable development in the NEV sector, offering guidance for policymakers and industry stakeholders aiming to align technological progress with environmental and social governance objectives.