The impact of digital inclusive finance on urban green innovation resilience

This study employs panel data from 257 prefecture-level cities in China spanning 2011 to 2021 to construct a series of panel regression models, aiming to investigate the influence of digital inclusive finance (DIF) on urban green innovation resilience (GIR) from a multidimensional perspective. The empirical findings demonstrate that DIF significantly strengthens GIR, and this result remains robust under a variety of econometric specifications. Notably, the effect of DIF on GIR exhibits substantial heterogeneity across cities characterized by differing levels of openness, capital endowment, and resource dependency. Mechanism analysis reveals that DIF enhances GIR primarily by improving supply chain efficiency, with artificial intelligence (AI) acting as a critical enabler. Moreover, spatial econometric results indicate that while DIF contributes positively to local GIR, it produces negative spatial spillovers on adjacent cities. Finally, we find that improvements in GIR, driven by DIF, further contribute to enhancing urban green economic efficiency. These findings provide policy-relevant insights for accelerating green transitions and formulating differentiated strategies in emerging market economies.