Can Digital Finance Foster Sustainability? Multi-Dimensional Evidence from the Digitalization Era

Against the backdrop of the accelerating digitalization of economic and financial systems, digital finance is increasingly viewed as a potential catalyst for advancing sustainable development by improving financial accessibility and efficiency. This study provides multi-dimensional empirical evidence on the relationship between digital finance and sustainability, with a particular focus on inclusive green growth in the digital era. Drawing on the method of movement quantile regression, the results reveal that digital finance significantly promotes inclusive green growth, and its sustainability-enhancing effect becomes stronger at higher quantile levels. Further multi-dimensional decomposition shows that the expansion of financial coverage and the deepening of financial usage both contribute positively to sustainable and inclusive growth, although their effects exhibit notable heterogeneity across the conditional distribution. Specifically, the impact of coverage breadth intensifies at higher quantiles, whereas the influence of usage depth gradually weakens. In addition, green innovation and human capital accumulation are identified as important complementary drivers of sustainability. These findings offer nuanced insights into the mechanisms through which digital finance supports sustainable development and provide policy-relevant implications for calibrating digital financial architectures to achieve inclusive and green growth objectives.