Mechanisms of Intellectual Property Pledge Financing in Fostering Green Technological Innovation Among SRDI Enterprises

At the critical juncture of innovation-driven transformation, the inherent characteristics of “high specialization, high innovation, and light assets” among Specialized, Refined, Distinctive, and Innovative (SRDI) enterprises render their green technological innovation subject to a structural dilemma, namely, excessive internal capital consumption coupled with constrained access to external financing channels. The promulgation of the Intellectual Property Pledge Financing (IPPF) pilot policy has introduced a novel pathway to address this challenge. Drawing upon a sample of SRDI enterprises from 2010 to 2024, leveraging the IPPF pilot policy implemented in 2016 as a quasi-natural experiment, this study constructs a high-dimensional two-way fixed-effects model in conjunction with a difference-in-differences (DID) framework to examine the policy’s impact on green technological innovation. The empirical results reveal that the IPPF pilot policy significantly enhances the green technological innovation capacity in SRDI enterprises; Mechanism analyses reveal that the IPPF pilot policy empowers green technological innovation primarily by alleviating financing constraints. Moreover, fintech not only moderates the relationship between the IPPF pilot policy and financing constraints, but also positively moderates the mediating effect of financing constraints in the linkage between the IPPF pilot policy and green technological innovation. Heterogeneity analyses show that the promotive effect of the IPPF pilot policy on green technological innovation is more pronounced among enterprises located in China’s eastern regions, in environmentally less sensitive industries, and in regions characterized by a higher intensity of intellectual property protection.