Green Finance and Regional Environmental Governance: A Perspective on Industrial Structure Upgrading

Green finance and environmental governance are integral to ecological civilization construction. This study explores whether green finance advances regional environmental governance by promoting industrial structure upgrading, using balanced panel data from 31 Chinese provinces (2008–2023) and a fixed-effects model. Key empirical findings show that green finance significantly reduces regional environmental pollution, with a core coefficient of −0.8703 (p < 0.01) in the benchmark regression including individual and time effects. Industrial structure upgrading plays a mediating role, with an indirect effect of −0.0333 (accounting for 3.98% of the total effect). Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the governance effect is more pronounced in central and western regions (coefficients: −25.3420, −40.0136 *), and in regions with higher marketization and fiercer bank competition. Additionally, fiscal subsidies and government environmental concerns synergize with green finance, with interaction term coefficients of −0.134 (p < 0.05) and −0.112 (p < 0.05), respectively. The research enriches the theoretical framework of green finance and environmental governance and provides targeted policy implications for regional sustainable development.