FinTech Adoption and Sustainable Development Performance: Moderating Role of Local Environmental Concern Across Industries

Abstract Under the background of China's “Dual Carbon” strategy, corporate sustainable development performance has become a core indicator of high-quality development. As a key driver for improving resource allocation efficiency, FinTech adoption at the enterprise level requires further investigation regarding its impact on sustainable development. Drawing on institutional theory and the resource-based view, this study develops a theoretical framework to empirically examine the influence of FinTech adoption on firms' sustainable development performance and its underlying mechanisms. The model incorporates local government environmental concern as a moderating variable to explore its conditional effects, and further investigates industrial heterogeneity. The empirical results reveal that FinTech adoption significantly enhances sustainable development performance. The effect is more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises and heavily polluting firms. Additionally, local government environmental concern exhibits a substitution effect in the relationship between FinTech adoption and sustainability performance, reflecting cross-industry differences in resource endowments, technological capacity, and policy responsiveness.