The Impact of Digital Financial Inclusion on High-quality Economic Development in Dual-carbon Context

The emergence of digital technology has transformed the financial industry's growth paradigm, positioning digital inclusive finance as a key catalyst for economic expansion. Utilizing panel data from 31 Chinese provinces spanning 2011 to 2022, this study employs the entropy method to assess inter-provincial economic quality and investigates the impact of digital inclusive finance on regional economic advancement using bidirectional fixed effects and moderating effects models. Key findings indicate that digital inclusive finance significantly enhances China's economic quality, and two main sub-dimensional indices of digital financial inclusion - depth of use and degree of digitization - both contribute to high-quality economic development. Carbon emission intensity negatively moderates, while green innovation level positively moderates the impact. Notably, the positive influence of digital inclusive finance on economic quality is more pronounced in western and less developed areas.