Environmental Regulation and Green Technology Innovation Driving Industrial Structure Upgrading: From the Perspective of Heterogeneous Environmental Regulation

This study incorporates environmental regulation, green technological innovation, and industrial structure upgrading into a unified analytical framework. Collecting panel data from 71 core prefecture-level cities in the Chengdu–Chongqing, Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River and Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations from 2011 to 2023, adopting fixed-effects, mediation, and moderation models to investigate how environmental regulation and green technological innovation affect industrial structure upgrading, through which mechanisms these effects occur, and how inclusive digital finance moderates these relationships. The findings reveal that command-and-control and guidance-based environmental regulations all exert positive effects on industrial structure upgrading. Green technological innovation serves as a mediating mechanism through which command-and-control environmental regulation promotes industrial structure upgrading. Inclusive digital finance acts as a boundary condition shaping the effect of environmental regulation on industrial structure upgrading. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals regional variation in how different types of environmental regulation affect industrial structure upgrading. This study proposes policy recommendations that urban agglomerations should attach greater importance to green innovation, enhance the breadth and depth of inclusive digital finance utilization, and establish appropriate local environmental regulatory support systems so as to promote industrial structure upgrading.