Can industry-finance collaboration enhance regional entrepreneurial activity?: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

Information mismatches between industrial financing demand and the supply of financial resources constrain entrepreneurial actors’ market entry. Taking China’s industry–finance collaboration pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this study uses panel data from 289 Chinese cities over the period 2010–2023 and applies a staggered difference-in-differences approach to examine its impact on regional entrepreneurial activity. The results show that industry–finance collaboration significantly enhances regional entrepreneurial activity, and this finding remains robust across a series of checks. Mechanism analysis indicates that industry–finance collaboration affects regional entrepreneurial activity through three channels: financing constraint alleviation, technological innovation, and talent agglomeration. Financing constraint alleviation and technological innovation play more prominent roles than talent agglomeration. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the policy effect is more pronounced in small cities, cities in western China, and the tertiary sector, suggesting that this effect is shaped by cities’ development foundations, regional financial resource endowments, and industry-specific entry characteristics. From the perspective of information matching and factor allocation, this study reveals the mechanisms through which industry–finance collaboration affects regional entrepreneurial activity and provides empirical evidence for developing countries to formulate financial support policies.