AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON THE FACTORS INFLUENCING THE ISSUANCE (COUPON) RATE OF GREEN BONDS IN CHINA

In recent years, China's green bond market has developed dramatically and is playing an increasingly important role in the global green finance sector. This paper selects all the green bonds that have been issued in mainland China from 2016 to 2022 in the Wind database as the initial sample, and through data screening and organizing, 734 valid samples were finally obtained to be used in the empirical analysis through constructing a multiple regression model, to deeply study which factors will affect the interest rate of the green bond issuance. The empirical results show that: (1) The green bond issuance (coupon) rate will change positively with the changes of the benchmark interest rate and the issuance period. (2) The green bond issuance (coupon) rate will change negatively with the issuance scale, the GDP per capita level of the issuer's region, the debt rating, and the third-party authentication status. (3) Since most green bond issuers in China are state-owned enterprises, the empirical analysis at the current stage could not reveal any significant relationship between the coupon rate of green bonds issued in the form of public offerings with the nature of their issuers.