The policy effect of green finance in promoting industrial transformation and upgrading efficiency in China: analysis from the perspective of government regulation and public environmental demands

Industrial transformation and upgrading is an important step for China to carry out cleaner production and achieve the goal of carbon neutrality. With the help of green finance, we can optimize the allocation of financial resources and promote the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure. In order to explore the impact efficiency and policy effect of green finance on industrial transformation and upgrading in China, through the establishment of VAR model and super-efficiency DEA model, the relationship between green finance and industrial transformation and upgrading and its impact on efficiency are studied. In addition, the Tobit regression model is used to empirically test the impact of public environmental demands, government regulations, and their interaction terms on the efficiency of green finance in promoting industrial transformation and upgrading. The results show that the overall efficiency of green finance in promoting industrial transformation and upgrading is high, but it shows a downward trend, which may be due to the unbalanced development of the green financial system, information asymmetry, and the absence of enterprises from regulation. The impact coefficient of input-oriented government regulation is significantly negative, which indicates that increasing the investment in pollution control may encourage polluting enterprises’ emission behavior to obtain benefits. The impact of performance-oriented government regulation and public environmental demands on efficiency is not significant, which indicates that the supervision and binding force of enterprises are insufficient. Public environmental demands and input government regulations have significant synergistic governance advantages, indicating that the government should enhance the regulatory intensity of differentiated policies. The study provides a reference for the government to enhance the intensity of policy regulation and establish a diversified environmental governance system.