Regional Digital Financial Inclusion and Corporate Financial Investment Efficiency: An Environmental Spillover Perspective

Based on panel data of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2011 to 2023 (29,868 firm-year observations in total), this paper explores the environmental spillover relationship between regional digital financial inclusion (a proxy for the external digital financial ecosystem) and corporate financial investment efficiency. To identify causal effects, we adopt firm fixed effects and three strategies to mitigate endogeneity, namely, interactive fixed effects, lagged terms of regional digital financial inclusion, and instrumental variable estimation. The results suggest that regional digital financial inclusion, when interpreted as an environmental spillover from the external digital financial ecosystem, is associated with curbed inefficient financial investment and thus with improved investment efficiency. This effect operates through three channels: easing financing constraints, improving managerial sentiment, and accelerating digital transformation. Moreover, the positive effect is statistically significant and concentrates among non-state-owned enterprises, firms in eastern China, and sectors with limited traditional financial access (e.g., manufacturing and low-contact industries). Different from prior studies focusing on real investment efficiency, this paper enriches the literature on regional digital financial inclusion from an environmental spillover perspective. It also offers policy implications for fostering sustainable economic growth, strengthening the resilience of the real economy, and improving capital allocation efficiency.