Green technology innovation is crucial for achieving sustainable development. This paper establishes fixed effect and mediation effect models to study how digital finance influences corporate green technology innovation and the moderating role of financial constraints using the data of Chinese A-share public businesses from 2011 to 2020. The results show that, first, green technology innovation is facilitated by digital finance, and both the coverage breadth and use depth play important roles. Second, digital finance encourages business innovation in green technology by alleviating financial constraints. Third, in state-owned businesses and businesses located in the eastern regions, digital finance has a more visible driving impact on green technology innovation. The aforementioned findings offer insightful research to encourage the balanced growth of digital finance and better enable corporate green technology innovation.

The emitted levels of CO₂ continue to be a striking topic. These emissions have been growing over the years, thus, making them a predicament to be reckoned with. Eradicating such a predicament has not been easy because finding an optimal determinant has not been achieved by scholars; however, foreign direct investment inflows are known to play a role in such varying instances. Therefore, to analyze the impact that such inflows have on CO₂ emissions, this study employs data from 41 African countries from 2005 to 2019 and aims to assess how foreign direct investment and other variables influence CO₂ emitted levels. Moreover, this study tests the validity of the pollution haven and halo hypotheses on the employed African countries as its two main objectives. After applying the pooled least squares, fixed and random effects models, and the generalized method of moments, the findings revealed that per the adopted African countries, the pollution haven and halo hypotheses do not hold; however, foreign direct investment inflows contribute to the rising and falling levels of CO₂ emissions. In addition, the financial structure and per capita GDP increase the African countries’ CO₂ emitted levels, while trade openness causes a reduction. Based on the aforementioned findings, this study recommends that the government, policy-makers, industries, and interested personnel of this study’s employed countries should: apply and execute policies, laws, and regulations that will deter or punish polluting foreign investment and encourage clean ones; since green finance is making waves but is not well established in most African countries, green financing systems should be initiated and implemented; establish preferential trading policies that will highlight an addition of value via clean technology; and practice carbon capture, usage, and storage.

Industrial structure upgrading is a huge driving force for China’s green economic development. The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), a crucial component of China’s spatial economic pattern, is facing the dual pressure of economic development and environmental protection. Therefore, it needs to have its industrial structure upgraded immediately. This article measures the development levels of green finance using the entropy method and bases its analysis on the panel data of 11 provinces (municipalities) in the YREB from 2005 to 2019. A moderated mediating effect model is then built to thoroughly examine the influence paths of green finance and green technology innovation on industrial structure upgrading. According to the empirical findings, green finance and green technology innovation have a significant direct role in promoting the upgrading of industrial structures. They reflect significant regional disparities across the East, Midland, and West. Second, green technology innovation has an effective transmission mechanism in green finance, boosting industrial structure upgrading. Third, environmental regulations positively regulate green finance’s direct and indirect routes to support industrial structure upgrading. This study is the first to combine green finance, green technology innovation, environmental regulation, and industrial structure upgrading under one research framework, broadening the research scope of industrial transformation. These research findings provide theoretical and practical guidance for upgrading China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt’s industrial structure.

According to the panel data of 11 provinces (including two municipalities) in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) for 2011–2020, we empirically test the influence of digital finance on the structural upgrade of industries of the YREB using the least squares dummy variable estimation (LSDV) of the fixed effect model (FEM). R&D innovation is taken as the mediating variable to explore the mediating effect of R&D innovation in digital finance and industrial structural upgrading of the YREB. The empirical results indicate that the advancement of digital finance is able to advance upgrading the industrial structure of the YREB, and its promotion effectiveness has regional heterogeneity. Digital finance plays the largest role in accelerating industrial structural upgrading downstream of the YREB, followed by the midstream. The upstream plays the smallest role; R&D innovation has some mediating effects in digital finance, promoting structural upgrading of industries of the YREB. Therefore, we propose accelerating the development of digital finance, improving the digital financial system, and promoting regional coordinated regional development. Moreover, we propose to raise the R&D innovation level, further advance the industrial upgrading of YREB, advance the coordinated development of the YREB, and achieve common prosperity.