The Impact of Green Finance on Enterprise Environmental Strategies: Source Prevention or End‐Of‐Pipe Treatment?

ABSTRACT Based on the quasinatural experiment of China's green finance reform and innovation pilot zones (GFRIs), the impact of GFRIs on the environmental strategies of heavy‐polluting enterprises is discussed. The results show that after the implementation of GFRIs, heavy‐polluting enterprises are more inclined to end‐of‐pipe treatment than source prevention. Alleviating financing restrictions and enhancing external attention are potential channels for GFRIs to induce enterprises to adopt end‐of‐pipe treatment. Additionally, we explore the governance boundaries of GFRIs for heterogeneous characteristics of enterprises and the market environment. The findings enrich the research related to the economic consequences of GFRIs and provide empirical evidence to formulate the next step of pilot expansion.