How Does Green Finance Affect the Sustainable Development of the Regional Economy? Evidence from China

The continuous expansion of green finance makes it a new scheme to stimulate economic vitality, but its stimulation path remains to be explored. Using the panel data of 30 regions in China from 2016 to 2020, this research utilized an entropy method to evaluate green finance and the sustainable development of the regional economy (SDRE), and then discussed their coupling coordination relationship and regional heterogeneity. The results show that: (1) The developments of green finance and SDRE in the eastern coastal regions are generally better than that of China’s inland regions. (2) If green finance and SDRE are at a high level, their coupling coordination will be enhanced. Otherwise, the coordination effect will be weakened. (3) The influence of green finance on SDRE has evident regional heterogeneity, and the influence is positive in the echelon with a high degree of green finance