Green Credit and Total Factor Carbon Emission Performance—Evidence from Moderation-Based Mediating Effect Test

To achieve China’s new development pattern and the “dual carbon” goals, it is necessary to boost emission reduction and high-quality economic development simultaneously. Green credit (GC), consisting of environmental regulation and economic leverage, has a profound impact on improving total factor carbon emission performance (TFCEP). By selecting the panel data of 30 provinces and municipalities in China from 2001 to 2020, this paper constructs a series of panel models to analyze the transmission path of GC to TFCEP. The results indicate that the relationship between GC and TFCEP showed an “inverted-U-shaped” relationship. This is mainly because “energy-saving and emission reduction” first appeared in the government planning outline in 2006, and transition-friendly enterprises successfully transformed with low-interest green credit, thereby effectively improving their TFCEP. However, as environmental regulations continue to increase and the scale of green credit continues to expand, the efficiency of green credit allocation and internal conflicts with other environmental regulation policies are also emerging. At the same time, the advancement of industrial structure and green technology innovation had a significant mediating effect between GC and TFCEP; government quality has a strong moderating effect on the second stage of the mediating process. When GC reaches a certain scale, it tends to restrain TFCEP more in central and western China than in eastern China. Therefore, it is of great significance to continuously increase the scale of GC, promote the advancement of clean energy industrial structure, and improve green technology innovation.