Exploration of Supply Chain Finance and Enterprise Digital Technology Innovation Mechanism

The digital economy era presents new opportunities for supply chain finance to ease financial pressures on businesses and foster digital technological innovation by integrating capital, information, and logistics. Despite this, businesses encounter significant innovation costs and challenges during digital transformation, making traditional financing methods insufficient. Supply chain finance offers an innovative solution by merging the financial, informational, and logistic flows of the supply chain's upstream and downstream, leveraging digital technology to refine credit assessments and risk management. This paper examines the influence of supply chain finance on the digital technological innovation levels of businesses and the mechanisms behind it, using data from Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2023. The findings reveal that supply chain finance substantially boosts digital innovation by enhancing financing avenues, fostering information exchange, and empowering technology; company size positively moderates the link between supply chain finance and digital innovation. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that while supply chain finance has a more pronounced effect on state-owned enterprises, non-state-owned firms also gain benefits. The study's conclusions offer a theoretical foundation for refining financial resource allocation and enhancing supply chain finance policies, as well as strategic guidance for businesses to advance their digital transformation practices.