Levels of AI Investment, Environmental Disclosure Performance, and Firms’ Interest-Bearing Debt Financing Levels

Due to the broad use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in enterprises’ operations, an issue arises regarding the influence of AI investments on the financing behavior of firms. In this study, a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2023 was used to empirically investigate the influence of AI investment levels on interest-bearing debt ratios of firms, as well as to test the role of environmental disclosure performance in this regard. The results show that there exists a strong positive relationship between AI investment levels and interest-bearing debt ratios, which might mean either a high propensity to finance through debt or higher interest-bearing debts of firms. According to the results of stepwise regression, it can be concluded that AI investments are negatively related to environmental disclosure performance, and environmental disclosure performance is negatively correlated with interest-bearing debt ratios of firms, suggesting resource trade-offs. Heterogeneity analysis shows that this effect is mainly valid for large-scale firms, and robustness tests confirm the main results of this paper.