Bank connections, corporate social responsibility and low-carbon innovation

This paper discusses the relationship between bank connections and low-carbon innovation. It is empirically found that the existence of bank connections is expected to decrease the corporate low-carbon innovation level by 0.0369 standard deviations. The results hold after a series of robustness tests, including the introduction of the propensity score matching method. In addition, this paper discusses the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and finds that CSR promotion can significantly mitigate the negative impact of bank connections on corporate low-carbon innovation. Furthermore, this paper explores the reasons why enterprises construct bank connections from the environmental perspective and finds that both strict environmental regulation and a low level of green credit development may contribute to enterprises’ construction of bank connections. These findings reveal for the first time the environmental costs of corporate banking relationships and form policy recommendations on how to reduce adverse effects.