Digital Inclusive Finance and Urban Carbon Emission Intensity: The Mediating Roles of Industrial Structure Upgrading and Household Consumption Level

Against the backdrop of the increasingly urgent global climate governance situation, carbon emission reduction has gone beyond the simple scope of environmental protection and become an import benchmark for measuring the quality and sustainability of economic and social development. Drawing on data from 233 prefecture-level cities in China over the period 2015–2024, this study investigates the impact of digital inclusive finance (DIF) on urban carbon emission intensity (CI). The findings indicate that DIF significantly mitigates the effect on CI. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that this mitigating effect is more pronounced in cities with higher initial CI. DIF also exerts a stronger influence on curbing CI in environmental protection cities and non-central cities. The results also confirm that industrial structure upgrading (ISU) and household consumption level (HCL) serve as mediating mechanisms in the causal pathways. Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward suggestions concerning the popularization and expanded coverage of DIF. The coordinated implementation of these suggestions helps DIF fully exert its bridging role between financial and environmental sustainability, providing robust instrumental support for achieving regional carbon emission reduction targets and comprehensively advancing the sustainable development of cities.