How does green credit policy affect total factor productivity at the corporate level in China: the mediating role of debt financing and the moderating role of financial mismatch

Taking the "Green Credit Guidelines" issued in 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment and employing the A-share listed enterprises scanning from 2008 to 2020 as the research sample, this study has investigated the impact of green credit policy on total factor productivity at the corporate level in China, with the consideration of the mediating role of debt financing and the moderating role of financial mismatch. The findings are as follows: (1) green credit policy has effectively and directly promoted total factor productivity at the corporate level in China, (2) the mediating role of debt financing is merely supported for the full sample and the state-owned sample, (3) the moderating role of financial mismatch is merely established via codirectionally moderating the negative impact of green credit policy on debt financing for the full sample and the eastern sample, and (4) the non-state-owned enterprises' dilemma of difficult and expensive debt financing is proved. The conclusions and policy implementations are provided in the last section to highlight the practical and theoretical contributions of this study.