Can the Financial Industry ‘Anchor’ Carbon Emission Reductions?— The Mediating and Moderating Effects of the Technology Market

Abstract

Existing research is ambiguous about the relationship between the financial industry development scale and carbon emission reduction targets. Therefore, using data from 30 provinces and municipalities directly under the central government (excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) from 2009–2018, this study divides the reduction targets into emission quantity and intensity to investigate this relationship. Using the improved STIRPAT equation, the pooled OLS and other estimation technique in robustness test, we found that the financial industry development scale is positively related to emission quantity and negatively related to emission intensity. The financial industry development scale inhibits carbon emission intensity through the mediating role of the technology market development degree, which also has a moderating effect on the scale. The study also discusses the regional differences in the scale's impact on carbon emission intensity, its compensation effect on the economic loss caused by carbon emissions, and the positive influence of policy implementation on carbon emission intensity. We provide suggestions to reduce carbon emissions and achieve carbon neutrality.