In the current international context, the ways in which financial technology (FinTech) affects sustainable development need to be urgently identified. However, relevant studies are rare and there is no consensus on the optimal indicator system for sustainable development. Therefore, this study proposes an indicator system to evaluate sustainability and conducts in-depth analysis of the relationship between FinTech and sustainable development based on data of peer-to-peer platforms (P2P) in 31 Chinese provinces. The empirical results show the existence of a U-shaped relationship between FinTech and sustainable development, mainly determined by the pattern of extensive economic growth. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis indicates that there are significant regional differences in its impact on sustainable development, being significant in China’s eastern and central regions and insignificant in the western region; moreover, the impact on the central region is significantly higher than that on the eastern region. Our research not only has strong practical significance but also contributes significantly to the literature on FinTech and sustainable development.

Environmental, social responsibility, corporate governance (ESG) are increasingly becoming the consensus of enterprises’ development. However, whether the ESG indices of enterprises can improve their performance on stock market is rarely studied. In order to examine the relationship between enterprise’s ESG indices and stock market performance, and to further explore the heterogeneity impact of stock market performance on the enterprises’ ESG indices in different ownership backgrounds, we conducted an empirical analysis based on China’s A-share listed companies. The empirical results show that there is a positive correlation between enterprise’s ESG indices and its stock market performance. Further analysis indicates that, the impact of ESG indices on non-state-owned enterprises is greater than that on state-owned enterprises, and the stock market performance of the secondary industry is much more affected by ESG indices than that of the tertiary industry. Finally, from three aspects including information disclosure, policy protection, transformation and upgrading, recommendations are proposed on the future direction of China’s ecological civilization construction and sustainable development of enterprises.

Today, environmental protection has become a global issue, and various environmental regulations have been actively adopted. However, are these measures promoting or harming enterprise values? Is this effect the same for enterprises with different ownership backgrounds? In order to address these problems, we conducted an empirical analysis of China’s A-share market to investigate the relationship between the New Environmental Protection Law (NEPL) launched in China and corporate financial performance, and further explore the impact of environmental supervision intensity (ESI) from the perspective of ownership. The empirical results show that there is a negative correlation between NEPL and the financial performance of high pollution enterprises. Further analysis demonstrates that there is an inverted U-shape relationship between ESI and corporate financial performance for both state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), while the financial performance of SOEs is more sensitive and tolerant to environmental regulation than that of non-SOEs. Finally, we make recommendations for the future direction of China’s ecological civilization construction and sustainable development of enterprises based on three aspects: environmental awareness, policy considerations, and sustainable development. The innovation of this paper lies in putting NEPL and corporate financial performance in the same analytical framework for the first time, which enriches the research in this field. Meanwhile, it provides a new perspective for understanding the relationship between ESI and corporate financial performance through the analysis of nonlinearity and owner heterogeneity.

Enhancing land productivity is a crucial strategy for addressing key sustainable development issues, such as poverty reduction and ensuring food security. Farmers’ Internet use behavior offers the potential to improve land productivity. However, relatively little is known about the association between Internet use and land productivity. To fill this void, this study examines the impact of Internet use on land productivity and its mechanisms. The results indicate that farmers’ use of the Internet has a positive impact on improving agricultural land productivity. Internet use increases land productivity by 12.3%, and the conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests and endogeneity tests. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that Internet use significantly enhances land productivity in the central and northern parts of Jiangsu Province, while it does not have the same effect in the province’s southern regions. Without the addition of county fixed effects, the central sample regression results show that the coefficient for Internet use is 0.165 and significant at the 10% confidence level. When county fixed effects are added, the coefficient decreases to 0.117 and is not significant. The coefficient on Internet use for the northern sample is 0.128 and is significant at the 5% confidence level. Mechanistic analyses demonstrate that Internet use also enhances land productivity primarily by expanding the cultivated land area, facilitating mechanized production, and strengthening farmers’ social networks. The results of the study indicate that the positive effects of Internet use in improving land productivity should be fully released by strengthening the communication infrastructure, further enhancing farmers’ Internet use capacity, improving the land transfer system, upgrading the socialized service level of agricultural machinery, and strengthening agricultural financial support.

The rural land right has paved the way for the deepening of China’s agricultural land system, which is critical to the successful implementation of the rural revitalization plan in the new era. Based on the micro-survey data of farmers in Yunnan Province, we use an OLS model to empirically test the impact of rural land rights on farmers’ income in underdeveloped areas, and we use a stepwise regression method to test the mechanism role of land transfer willingness and behavior in the rural land right on farmers’ income. Benchmark regression results show that the implementation of rural land rights policy significantly increased the total income of farmers, which mainly comes from farm income. Although the rural land right policy has no significant impact on farmers’ non-farm income, the sign of right coefficient is positive. Mechanism analysis shows that the rural land right can increase the income of farmers by encouraging them to transfer to land. It shows that the property right of land is clear, which makes it easier for land to transfer and trade, and farmers can achieve a certain degree of scale operation, thereby increasing income. Finally, it is suggested that future fiscal funding in impoverished regions be directed toward land transfer links and that accompanying rules and regulations adequately protect farmers’ land contract management rights.