Search Results (243)

The rapid evolution of fintech has accelerated the integration of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies into crowdfunding platforms, reshaping entrepreneurial finance and challenging traditional conceptions of money, intermediation, and financial risk. This study empirically examines the socio-cultural, demographic, and behavioural factors influencing funders’ perceptions and investment decisions in crypto-crowdfunding, an emerging model situated at the intersection of digital currencies, financial inclusion, and decentralised capital formation. Using primary survey data from a focus group of 50 respondents measuring perceptions through a structured five-point Likert questionnaire, the analysis investigates how risk perception, trust and security, investor awareness, and perceived benefits shape participation in crypto-crowdfunded projects. The findings indicate that blockchain-based features such as transparency and decentralisation are associated with variations in perceived trust and risk assessment, rather than uniformly enhancing investor confidence. Socio-demographic characteristics emerge as significant determinants of investor awareness, perceived risks, and expected benefits, confirming pronounced behavioural heterogeneity in digital-finance participation. Regression results reveal strong interdependencies between trust, risk perception, and awareness, underscoring the importance of informational quality and risk-governance mechanisms in supporting sustainable adoption. By providing empirical evidence on individual-level determinants of participation in crypto-crowdfunding, the study contributes to the literature on the future of money by clarifying how crypto-crowdfunding operates as a behavioural-financial phenomenon embedded in decentralised governance structures. Full article

This article examines how platform-mediated crisis policy shaped inclusion and exclusion outcomes for small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in the Western Cape during COVID-19. Integrating a market-failure perspective with entrepreneurial ecosystem theory, we present a theory-driven secondary analysis of 16 qualitative interviews and policy documents. We map five crisis-amplified failures—finance, markets, digital, institutions, and human capital—onto Isenberg’s six ecosystem domains and analyze how provincial interventions, particularly digital marketplaces, voucher schemes, and online coordination tools, functioned as governance mechanisms regulating access, visibility, and participation. The findings show that platform-mediated interventions accelerated coordination and digital market access but disproportionately benefited already connected firms, leaving institutional and inclusion gaps largely unresolved. We conceptualize sub-national crisis response as a form of platform governance and discuss implications for designing more inclusive digital policy infrastructures in middle-income contexts. Full article

In light of China’s dual national strategies of Healthy China and the Big Food View, this study examines the relationship between digital inclusive finance and residents’ dietary nutrition, with a focus on healthier and more sustainable dietary patterns. Using panel data from 31 Chinese provinces over the period 2015–2022, we employ a two-way fixed effects model to evaluate how digital inclusive finance is associated with food intake diversity and dietary structure balance. The empirical findings show that digital inclusive finance is positively associated with increased consumption of both plant-based foods (e.g., cereals) and animal-based foods (e.g., meat, milk and aquatic products), contributing to improved dietary structure balance. These findings remain robust after addressing potential endogeneity concerns and conducting a series of multiple robustness checks. Further heterogeneity analysis indicates that the depth of use and degree of digitization are significantly associated with dietary quality, while the breadth of coverage shows no significant effect. Moreover, the positive associations are more pronounced among rural residents, upper-middle income groups, and households with lower levels of human capital, groups with high e-commerce development and high levels of digitalization. These findings highlight the potential role of digital inclusive finance as a policy tool for promoting healthier and more sustainable dietary patterns, particularly among disadvantaged populations in rural China. Full article

This study investigates the determinants of FinTech adoption and its role in supporting financial inclusion among micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in South Sumatra, Indonesia. The analysis applies an extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) framework that incorporates digital financial literacy, artificial intelligence literacy, green self-identity, and perceived green finance. Data from 632 MSMEs, comprising 377 rural and 255 urban enterprises, were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), multi-group analysis (MGA), and importance performance map analysis (IPMA). The results indicate that facilitating conditions represent the most influential determinant of FinTech adoption among rural MSMEs, while effort expectancy emerges as the dominant factor in urban enterprises. FinTech adoption also significantly strengthens both FinTech continuance intention and financial inclusion across the two groups, highlighting the role of digital financial technologies in promoting inclusive economic development. In addition, the IPMA shows that rural MSMEs place strong emphasis on facilitating conditions as the key driver of FinTech adoption, whereas urban MSMEs prioritize effort expectancy. By extending the UTAUT framework with sustainability-related constructs, this study provides new evidence on how digital financial innovation can support inclusive growth and contribute to Sustainable Development Goal 8. Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly reshaping corporate production and governance, raising the question of how policy can steer corporations toward sustainable development. This study treats the staggered implementation of China’s National Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Development Pilot Zone policy (AI Pilot Zone policy) as a quasi-natural experiment. Using data from Chinese listed companies from 2014 to 2024, we employ a multi-period difference-in-differences approach to identify the impact of the policy on corporate sustainable development performance (SDP) and to explore the underlying mechanisms. The results show that the AI Pilot Zone policy significantly improves corporate SDP, and this finding remains robust to a series of checks, including parallel trend tests, placebo tests, PSM-DID estimations, and tests addressing potential biases under staggered policy adoption. Heterogeneity analysis based on the TOE framework indicates that the policy effect is more pronounced among firms with higher R&D intensity, stronger internal control, and those located in regions with higher levels of digital inclusive finance. Mechanism analysis further suggests that dynamic capabilities, including innovation capability, adaptation capability, and absorptive capability, play important mediating roles in the relationship between the policy and corporate SDP. Overall, this study provides micro-level evidence on the sustainability effects of AI-oriented public policies and offers insights for improving policy design and corporate capability development. Full article

Climate hazards increasingly disrupt schooling, revealing the limits of preparedness models that treat teachers only as implementers. This study reframes teacher empowerment as a climate-resilience capability and examines how governance arrangements enable (or constrain) hazard-ready education systems. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR), searches of Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar (2000–2025) identified 53 eligible studies. Across diverse hazards and settings, the evidence converges on a governance-to-capability pathway: empowerment becomes resilient performance only when the delegated decision space is matched with financed capacity (time, training, contingency resources), timely risk information and functional communication/digital infrastructure, institutionalized cross-sector coordination (education–DRR–health–protection–local government), and learning-oriented accountability (after-action review and adaptive revision rather than punitive compliance). Reported outcomes include higher preparedness quality, earlier protective action, improved learning continuity and safeguarding, and more sustainable teacher well-being/retention. Predictable failure modes include mandate–resource mismatch, accountability overload, unstable centralization–autonomy dynamics, and inequitable empowerment distribution affecting rural schools, women, and contract teachers, and disability inclusion. The evidence gaps remain pronounced for chronic hazards (especially heat and wildfire smoke), high-vulnerability contexts (fragile/conflict settings and informal settlements), and standardized measures of equity, burden distribution, governance performance, and cost-effectiveness. Policies should prioritize integrated governance packages with explicit protection and equity safeguards. Full article

Green finance has emerged as a crucial instrument for driving the macroeconomic transition toward a low-carbon economy, yet its specific transmission mechanisms warrant deeper empirical scrutiny. Leveraging China’s Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zones as a quasi-natural experiment, this scientific study employs a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) framework using provincial panel data from 2009 to 2023. To overcome the limitations of unidimensional metrics, we developed a comprehensive Industrial Structure Upgrading Index (ISUI) that integrates structural rationalization, advancement, and greening. The empirical findings reveal that the green finance pilot policy exerts a significant and positive impact on the ISUI. This core result remains robust under a series of rigorous checks, including the Callaway and Sant’Anna (CS-DID) estimator. Mechanism analyses demonstrate a dual “push–pull” dynamic: Green Credit Intensity (GCI) acts as the primary mediating channel by directing targeted financial resources (financial pull), while stringent environmental regulation positively moderates this effect (administrative push). Furthermore, the moderating role of digital finance is statistically non-significant, underscoring the policy’s broad inclusiveness and its independence from regional digital infrastructure. Heterogeneity estimations identify a clear structural catch-up effect, with more pronounced benefits observed in resource-dependent regions and areas with historically lower innovation capacities. Ultimately, these findings indicate that coordinating targeted financial incentives with environmental oversight can effectively drive multidimensional industrial upgrading, providing valuable evidence for sustainable transition strategies. Full article

Using the data of Chinese listed companies from 2011 to 2021 and the Digital Inclusive Finance Index from Peking University, this study investigates the impact of digital finance on the quality of corporate environmental information disclosure from both internal and external perspectives. The findings indicate the following: (1) Digital finance significantly enhances corporate environmental information disclosure quality, a conclusion that remains valid after a series of robustness tests. (2) Mechanism analysis shows that digital finance boosts disclosure quality by enhancing corporate environmental awareness and strengthening external oversight. (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that digital finance more strongly enhances environmental disclosure quality for state-owned enterprises, firms in non-heavy pollution industries, and those located in regions with well-developed digital infrastructure. (4) Economic consequences analysis demonstrates that better disclosure quality, driven by digital finance, boosts a firm’s capital attractiveness, R&D investments, financing conditions, and green innovation. This process also triggers significant environmental spillover effects. The findings enrich theoretical research in digital finance and expand the discussion on enhancing environmental information disclosure. Full article

Against the backdrop of the accelerating digitalization of economic and financial systems, digital finance is increasingly viewed as a potential catalyst for advancing sustainable development by improving financial accessibility and efficiency. This study provides multi-dimensional empirical evidence on the relationship between digital finance and sustainability, with a particular focus on inclusive green growth in the digital era. Drawing on the method of movement quantile regression, the results reveal that digital finance significantly promotes inclusive green growth, and its sustainability-enhancing effect becomes stronger at higher quantile levels. Further multi-dimensional decomposition shows that the expansion of financial coverage and the deepening of financial usage both contribute positively to sustainable and inclusive growth, although their effects exhibit notable heterogeneity across the conditional distribution. Specifically, the impact of coverage breadth intensifies at higher quantiles, whereas the influence of usage depth gradually weakens. In addition, green innovation and human capital accumulation are identified as important complementary drivers of sustainability. These findings offer nuanced insights into the mechanisms through which digital finance supports sustainable development and provide policy-relevant implications for calibrating digital financial architectures to achieve inclusive and green growth objectives. Full article

The South African Government prioritises Small, Micro-, and Medium Enterprises (SMMEs) as catalysts for employment creation, in alignment with Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8), Decent Work and Economic Growth, which advocates for sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth. However, the extent to which agro-processing SMMEs translate this policy ambition into measurable socio-economic gains remains contested due to persistent structural, financial, and operational constraints. This study develops a comprehensive, data-driven business support framework tailored to agro-processing SMMEs in the Free State province of South Africa. Employing a mixed-methods approach, survey data from 88 agro-processing SMMEs were analysed across 18 business performance dimensions. Average agreement scores and performance gaps were utilised to diagnose strengths and vulnerabilities within the sector. While overall performance was relatively strong (average agreement score: 86.7%), a critical weakness emerged in operational cost management (76.1%), revealing a 14.2% gap relative to the highest-performing dimension, equipment selection (90.3%). Based on these empirical insights, the study proposes a three-tiered business support architecture: (i) maintaining and leveraging high-performing dimensions (≥85% agreement), (ii) targeted enhancement for moderate-performing areas (80–84.9%), and (iii) crisis intervention for critical weaknesses (<80%). The framework integrates cross-cutting support services, including financing, regulatory guidance, and technology access, delivered through a phased implementation strategy comprising crisis intervention, system establishment, and optimisation and scaling. A multi-channel delivery mechanism, combining a hub-and-spoke model, mobile support units, and a digital platform, ensures provincial accessibility. By translating performance diagnostics into differentiated policy action, the framework promotes efficient resource allocation, supports both high-potential and vulnerable agro-processing SMMEs, and embeds a robust monitoring and evaluation system to track key performance indicators. The study contributes to the SMME development literature by demonstrating how structured, tiered, and context-specific support models can strengthen resilience, competitiveness, and sustainable agro-industrial growth in developing-country settings. Full article

This study investigats both emerging and existing ethical issues associated with the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in Africa, a region characterised by unique socio-economic and cultural complexities. Even though AI adoption is rapidly transforming and delivering substantial benefits in sectors such as healthcare, finance, agriculture, education, industry, and governance, its implementation still raises ethical concerns. These ethical issues include digital colonialism, algorithmic bias, job displacement, limited infrastructure, data scarcity, linguistic diversity, and the risk of imposing foreign values that may undermine indigenous knowledge and social cohesion. Grounded in Afro-communitarianism and stakeholder theory, which emphasises communal values such as Ubuntu and cooperative engagement among stakeholders, this desk-based research identifies these major challenges and introduces a culturally grounded framework for responsible AI adoption in Africa. The framework calls for stronger governance, capacity building, collaboration among stakeholders, and tailored strategies across multiple stakeholders to ensure AI supports Africa’s inclusive and sustainable progress. Full article

Under the background of the “dual-carbon” goals and the ecological ecological-civilization-construction strategy, improving the synergistic efficiency of pollution reduction and carbon abatement is a key to promoting green high-quality development. Based on a panel of 30 provincial-level regions in China for 2012–2022, this paper evaluates the impact of digital financial inclusion on the synergistic efficiency of pollution reduction and carbon abatement. First, using a global-frontier directional-distance function (DDF), we characterize the improvement space of “desirable-output expansion—simultaneous contraction of pollution and carbon emissions” under given input constraints, and construct a synergistic efficiency indicator (eff_main). Second, we present a correlation benchmark within a two-way fixed-effects (TWFE) framework and use lead/lag (placebo) tests to probe potential endogeneity; we further construct a Bartik (shift–share) instrumental variable and employ Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) to strengthen causal identification. The results show that in TWFE regressions, digital financial inclusion (dif100) is positively and significantly correlated with synergistic efficiency, with a coefficient of 0.113 (i.e., an increase of 100 index points in the digital financial inclusion index is associated with an average increase of 0.113 in eff_main), but a significant lead effect is present, so this result should be interpreted as correlational only; 2SLS estimates indicate a robust positive causal effect of digital financial inclusion on synergistic efficiency, with a baseline coefficient of 0.405, rising to 0.501 under lagged specifications—exhibiting a dynamic feature of “gradual release in subsequent years.” The study suggests that developing digital financial inclusion helps raise regions’ comprehensive green-transition performance and sustainable development capacity; policy implications include accelerating the closing of digital infrastructure gaps, improving green-finance institutions and performance constraints, and guiding funds more effectively toward energy-saving, emission reduction and low-carbon technology areas. Full article

Public authorities have increasingly focused on digital financial inclusion (DFI) owing to its potential to enhance overall financial inclusion (FI) and, ultimately, to mitigate households’ financial vulnerability (FV). Although the existing literature generally reports a negative relationship between DFI and FV, most studies focus on economically less developed countries and apply heterogeneous measurement approaches. This study adopts a quantitative methodology to assess DFI as a potential determinant of FV in a developed economy—Spain—using both objective and subjective indicators of FV. DFI is proxied by the diversity of payment and transfer methods conducted via Internet and mobile devices. Empirical findings confirm a negative association between DFI and FV, indicating that higher levels of digital engagement are associated with lower FV. However, results also reveal a potential adverse effect on savings behaviour, possibly linked to the reduced “pain of paying” commonly associated with online transactions. These insights suggest that policies promoting DFI should be complemented by initiatives to enhance financial literacy, strengthen consumer protection laws, and reintroduce the “feel of cashback” within online payment platforms. By providing evidence from a developed country, this paper contributes to the limited literature by also examining subjective measures of FV variables and offline FI. Full article

In recent years, Latin America has experienced a growing incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into business and organizational environments, driven by digital transformation, data availability, and competitive pressures. Across multiple sectors, AI-based tools are increasingly used to support complex decision-making processes, raising both opportunities and challenges related to efficiency, ethics, and organizational readiness. Within this context, this systematic review examines the scientific evidence on the implementation of AI in business decision-making in Latin America. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a systematic search was conducted in the Scopus database for articles published between 2021 and 2025. The search strategy combined Boolean operators related to AI and decision-making. Inclusion criteria comprised original, open-access research articles conducted in Latin American countries and published in Spanish or Portuguese. After screening for temporality, geographic focus, language, document type, accessibility, duplication, and relevance, 27 studies were selected from an initial pool of 276,302 records. The studies originated mainly from Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador. The findings show that AI is applied across sectors such as industry, agriculture, finance, education, and public services, primarily to enhance predictive capacity, automate processes, and support data-driven decisions. While AI adoption improves efficiency, cost reduction, and strategic innovation, its effectiveness depends on staff training, ethical governance, and strategic alignment. Persistent challenges include resistance to change, data quality limitations, and concerns regarding transparency and algorithmic bias. Overall, AI emerges as a transformative but context-dependent tool for business decision-making in Latin America. Full article

The World Bank asserts that reducing extreme poverty and achieving shared prosperity are both made possible through financial inclusion. Digital finance may enhance financial stability, thereby supporting more inclusive and sustainable economic growth. Despite its potential benefits, the link between digital finance and financial stability remains underexplored in the literature. The present study addresses this research gap in the literature by exploring the relationship between digital finance and financial stability. Panel data of 160 countries over the period of 2004–2024 have been collected and analyzed by using Moment Quantile Regression (MMQREG). The robust outcomes show that digital finance significantly improves financial stability. This study aims to contribute to the existing literature. The findings of this study will help policymakers in designing effective or supportive policies for digital financial services. Findings may inform policies aligned with SDG 8: promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth. Full article