Green Financial Inputs and Green Innovation Efficiency in China’s Manufacturing Sector: A Three-Stage DEA Evaluation with Sub-Industry Comparisons

Green financial inputs (GFI) play an important role in promoting green innovation in the manufacturing industry, and accurately evaluating GFI utilization efficiency and its industry heterogeneity is crucial for optimizing green resource allocation. To address this, this study applies a three-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, using panel data of 29 Chinese manufacturing sectors from 2011 to 2024. This model eliminates the interference of environmental factors and statistical noise via the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) in the second stage, thus obtaining more reliable efficiency evaluation results. The empirical results show that: (1) GFI can effectively improve manufacturing green innovation efficiency (GIE), but the overall utilization efficiency remains at a low level; (2) there exists significant industry heterogeneity, with technology-intensive industries performing best in GFI utilization efficiency, followed by capital-intensive industries, and labor-intensive industries the worst; (3) environmental regulation and green financial market environment significantly improve GFI utilization efficiency, while government green finance support and market structure have no significant effects on it; (4) after eliminating external disturbances, the real GFI utilization efficiency tends to be stable, and the efficiency decline in 2023–2024 is mainly caused by external shocks. Corresponding targeted implications are put forward to optimize GFI allocation and promote balanced green development of China’s manufacturing industry.