Role of fintech, green finance, and natural resource rents in sustainable climate change in China. Mediating role of environmental regulations and government interventions in the pre-post COVID eras

The recent advancement in financial technologies is impressive in various aspects. Nevertheless, emerging green finance literature highlights that due to such advancement, a limited positive impact is observed on green finance. This further raises various concerns regarding the gauged benefits from sustainability point of view. This curiosity leads to investigate the impact of fintech on environmental sustainability via mediating role of green finances and natural resource volatility. The study explores the proposed association from the perspective of governmental interventions and environmental regulation. To achieve the purpose of the study, a dataset comprising 10 years from 2013 to 2022 is collected from China. Based on different regression-based models, it is inferred that the development of fintech in China facilitates the reduction of carbon emissions and promotes climate quality. Green finance as a mediator enhances while natural resource volatility as a mediator deteriorates climate sustainability. Furthermore, industrial structure and environmental regulations also shed inverse impacts on environmental quality. Government interventions play a crucial role in the betterment of climate quality. It is also observed that fintech-associated carbon emission intensity varies with higher-order quartiles. Moreover, the impact of fintech on carbon emission is heterogeneous across different COVID-based sub-samples.