Does green credit promote industrial upgrading?—analysis of mediating effects based on technological innovation

At present, China’s economy is transforming from rapid development to high-quality development, and the prominent problems in the industrial structure need to be resolved urgently. The implementation of the green credit policy restricts loans to industries with high energy consumption, high pollution, and overcapacity to prevent excessive expansion and consumption of resources, thereby achieving the goals of industrial restructuring and environmental protection. Technological innovation is an important means to cope with environmental changes and adjust the industrial structure. Can technological innovation under green credit achieve the upgrading of the industrial structure? This paper combines green credit, technological innovation, and industrial structure upgrading to conduct research, and theoretically analyzes the impact of green credit and technological innovation on industrial structure upgrading, and analyzes how green credit affects industrial structure upgrading through technological innovation. An empirical test using panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2017 revealed that green credit can promote the upgrading of the industrial structure. Econometric analysis based on the mediation effect model found that green credit not only directly promotes the upgrading of the industrial structure, but also has the mediation effect that affects the upgrading of the industrial structure through technological innovation. In the sub-regional regression analysis, technological innovation affects the upgrading of the industrial structure. The mediation effect is still significant. Based on the research in this article, it is recommended to actively implement green credit policies, expand the scale of green credit, firmly implement the innovation-driven development strategy, and at the same time vigorously develop clean energy and reduce energy consumption. The research significance of the article is to explore the impact of green credit on industrial structure upgrading, which has implications for the implementation and promotion of subsequent green credit policies. At the same time, it enriches the research on green credit.