1. Introduction
The Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, as China’s most economically developed and most urbanized area, is regarded as an important engine of China’s economic development. In 2017, China designated Zhejiang Province in the Yangtze River Delta region as a pilot zone for green finance reform and innovation. At the first China International Import Expo (CIIE) in 2018, President Xi Jinping announced that the government “supports the development of the Yangtze River Delta’s regional integration and rises it into a national strategy”. The Outline of the Yangtze River Delta Regional Integration Development Plan was promulgated by the State Council in 2019. It included Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces in the Yangtze River Delta, which is a “40 + 1” city group (forty prefecture-level cities and one municipality directly under the Central Government), stated that the Yangtze River Delta should be built into a beautiful demonstration zone in China.
In 1974, the former West Germany established the world’s first environmental bank. In 1992, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued the “
Declaration on Environmental Sustainability in the Banking and Insurance Sector”. In 2003, when the “Equator Principles” came out, the concept of green finance had been widely recognized all over the world. Using green financial services to promote sustainable economic development has become the mainstream trend of the development of the international financial industry [
1]. With the increase in population density and the consumption of resources in the process of industrial expansion in the Yangtze River Delta, environmental problems have become increasingly serious. Green finance plays an increasingly important role in achieving sustainable development of the environment, economy, and society. The government has successively issued the
Green Credit Guideline (2012),
Green Bond Issuance Guidelines (2015), and other documents related to green financial governance to play the role of green finance in the construction of ecological civilization. On August 31, 2016, in the
Guiding Opinions on Building a Green Financial System issued by seven ministries and commissions such as the People’s Bank of China, green finance was defined as “economic activities that support environmental improvement, respond to climate change, and use resources efficiently”, that is, financial services provided for project investment, project operation, and risk management in the fields of environmental protection, energy conservation, clean energy, green transportation, and green buildings. “Green” refers to saving resources, reducing pollution, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development. The concept of “green” is basically the same as “environmentally friendly”. Green finance includes mainly green credit, green securities, green insurance, green investment, and carbon finance.
From a macroeconomic perspective, green finance promotes the optimization of the economic structure, the improvement of supply-side quality, and maintains economic growth. In terms of microeconomic efficiency, the green financial system can encourage enterprises to carry out green innovation, reduce market transaction costs, and guide consumers toward green consumption [
2]. At the same time, green finance has become a powerful driving force for the construction of ecological civilization in two ways. On the one hand, it provides financial support for enterprises engaging in environmental protection, reducing the financial barriers of these enterprises; on the other hand, it can limit traditional high-pollution and high-energy-consuming enterprises, causing such enterprises to leave the market. This type of resource allocation can improve the efficiency of capital utilization and achieve sustainable economic and environmental development. Moreover, green finance is of great significance to rural revitalization and poverty alleviation. For example, green agricultural insurance, poverty alleviation development insurance products, green financial information disclosure systems, and green poverty alleviation performance systems can achieve stable and sustainable poverty alleviation [
3]. With the promotion of rural revitalization as a national strategy, funds will be injected into rural revitalization-related green industries and ecological and environmental protection projects to promote rural revitalization and development by constructing rural green financial systems and innovating rural green financial products [
4]. Thus, for the Yangtze River Delta, the government aims to use financial tools to accelerate the promotion of environmental governance and green development, to innovate in the construction of ecological civilization, and to enhance the level of regional ecological civilization construction; thus, the help of green finance is needed. Hence, it is of great significance to explore the characteristics of green finance development and its influencing factors to promote the development of green finance in the Yangtze River Delta.
Some scholars have focused on the theoretical framework, technology, and investment methods of green finance. Green finance, as an important innovative product of financial services, is an effective means to resolve the contradiction between environmental protection and economic development [
5]. Paranque and Revelli incorporate finance into the operational framework based on theoretical choices and point out that, in terms of portfolio management, green credit cannot be managed like ordinary financial products, but should be part of social projects embedded in collective governance [
6]. Ng reveals a top-down approach of institutional legitimacy for green financing influenced by a national policy and enhanced through market-based financing and proposes a framework of circumstantial developments that contribute to the development of a green finance system [
7]. Sanderson finds that blockchain technology can track carbon savings by providing green loans to institutional bond markets [
8]. Gianfrate and Peri hold that convenience, in terms of lower returns paid to investors, is approximately −0.2%, and green bonds remain convenient after accounting for green certification costs [
9]. Reboredo and Ugolini study price connectedness between the green bond and financial markets, and green bonds are weakly connected with the stock, energy, and high-yield corporate bond markets [
10].
Some researchers measure the development level and evaluation index of green finance. Zeng et al. attempted to construct a set of evaluation systems that are suitable for China’s green finance development by drawing lessons from the connotations, indicators, and methods of green finance development evaluation at home and abroad, and combining the characteristics of China’s green finance [
1]. Li et al. measured the development level of green finance and the comprehensive level of the ecological environment in the three major economic circles [
11]. Chen constructed a series of green finance development evaluation indexes for the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration by assembling construction system policies with market vitality and other indicators. Some researchers have explored the connection between green finance, industrial structure, economic development, and ecological environment [
12]. Chai found that consumption and investment have a threshold effect on the pulling effect of green finance [
13]. Zhang and Zhao studied the dynamic relationship between green credit, technology progress, and industrial structure optimization, based on the Panel Vector Autoregression model [
14]. Zhai analyzed ecological advantages and the path selection of green finance development. Some researchers analyze the impact of green finance on the banking industry [
15]. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between green credit and bank performance [
16]. Green credit has a stronger improvement effect on the financial performance of small-scale and higher-liquidity banks [
17]. From the perspective of the cost-benefit effect path, green credit will weaken the profitability of small and medium-sized commercial banks but will enhance the profitability of large commercial banks [
18].
At the same time, a large number of researchers focus on the analysis of the influencing factors of green finance. Taghizadeh-Hesary and Yoshino consider that the green credit guarantee scheme reduces the risk of green finance, distributed ledger technologies increase transparency in green finance, and green finance is directly and indirectly related to various sustainable development goals [
19]. In an empirical analysis of Heilongjiang Province, Dong and Fu (2018) found that the degree of impact on the development of green finance is from regional GDP, carbon emissions, air quality, and the degree of financial development [
20]. There are main factors that include regional GDP, the degree of financial development, air quality, and education, which affect the evolution of the spatial distribution of green finance development in Guangdong Province. These factors have obvious spatial spillover effects [
21]. Government policies have a non-negligible impact on green finance. The debt financing capacity of heavily polluting enterprises has dropped significantly under the “Green Credit Guidelines” policy in China, which improved their standard of green credit financial services and strengthened the debt-supporting capacity of green credit [
22]. Nationally Determined Contributions and other macroeconomic and institutional factors are driving growing green bond issuances that will finance climate and sustainability investments through the future [
23]. Eyraud et al. analyzed that green investment is boosted by economic growth and found that some policy interventions, such as the introduction of carbon pricing schemes or “feed-in-tariffs”, have a positive and significant impact on green investment [
24].
To summarize, at present, many studies are mainly qualitative research on green finance and do not reflect the influence of geographical location and spatial factors in the development process of green finance, lack a spatial connection and correlation analysis of green finance in neighboring cities, and lack an analysis of the spatial and temporal characteristics and influencing factors in the Yangtze River Delta. At the same time, some scholars explore the spatial adjustment of financial efficiency. Financial agglomeration could increase the amount of financial capital through external effects, promote the formation of economies of scale, improve urban green economic efficiency [
25,
26], and have a significant spatial spillover effect on green development efficiency [
27].
Therefore, based on urban economic data from the “40 + 1” city clusters in the Yangtze River Delta from 2011 to 2017, this paper uses the spatial econometric method to explore the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of green finance development in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, analyzes the geographical distribution and spatial correlation of green finance development in the Yangtze River Delta, delves into the impact of green finance factors and spillover effects, and proposes countermeasures to improve the level of green finance development in the Yangtze River Delta.