Can Digital Inclusive Finance Reduce Agricultural Pollution Emission Intensity?
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: As an important component of rural revitalization and the green transformation of agriculture, the effectiveness of agricultural pollution control depends on the efficient mobilization and use of rural financial resources. Using a balanced panel of 31 Chinese provinces over 2011–2024, this study employs a two-way fixed effects model, a shift-share instrumental variable strategy, a mediation analysis and a panel threshold model to examine how digital inclusive finance affects agricultural pollution emission intensity. Three findings stand out. First, digital inclusive finance significantly reduces pollution emission intensity, with a 1% increase in the digital inclusive finance index lowering emission intensity by about 0.286%. Second, the effect operates partly through an indirect channel: digital inclusive finance fosters new quality agricultural productive forces, which in turn curb pollution, and the indirect effect is estimated with bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. Third, the relationship is non-linear and follows a double-threshold pattern of increasing marginal returns. Agricultural economic scale, cropping structure and livestock structure are positively associated with pollution, as are environmental regulation and production conditions, whereas a more capable agricultural workforce and a larger stock of agricultural business entities reduce pollution. The study’s novelty lies in formally introducing agricultural new quality productive forces as a mediating mechanism linking digital inclusive finance to agricultural pollution control and in documenting its threshold-shaped, increasingly pronounced effect.
Source: Sustainability
DOI: 10.3390/su182111305
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
OpenAlex ID: W7225324610