Can digital financial inclusion improve the ecological environment? Evidence from counties in the Yellow River Basin of China

While the rapid economic growth promotes industrialization and urbanization, problems such as resource depletion, environmental pollution and ecological damage are inevitable. How to achieve ecological environment improvement through digital inclusive finance while promoting inclusive economic growth has become a new issue for all developing countries. Based on panel data of 733 counties of the Yellow River Basin from 2014 to 2022, this paper empirically analyzes the impact and mechanism of digital financial inclusion on the ecological environment through the fixed-effects, mediation, moderation, and quantile model. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: (1) Digital financial inclusion increases the ecological environment index by 3.89%. Digital financial inclusion significantly improves the local ecological environment. (2) Digital financial inclusion improves the ecological environment in the Yellow River Basin by promoting technological innovation and rationalization industry structure. This improvement is negatively moderated by the social credit level. (3) In social-economic less developed areas, digital inclusive finance can better promote the ecological environment. Only digitization level of digital financial inclusion can promote the ecological environment of the Yellow River Basin. Across the quantile of ecological environment from low to high, the impact of digital financial inclusion on the ecological environment transitions from negative to positive, with its influence progressively increasing.