Empirical Study On The Impact Of Financial Technology Development On Financing Of Film Production Enterprises

The film and television business represents cultural soft power and is an indispensable conduit for national cultural confidence."The cultural development plan for the 14 th Five-Year Plan period(2021-2025)" states that China’s cultural industry is still in a period of great strategic opportunity,and that it should be supported to achieve high-quality development.The industrial characteristic of "content is king" determines the central position of film production companies in the film and television cultural industry.Solving the financing problem of film production enterprises is the key node of improving the modern management level and the efficiency of industrial chain in China’s film industry and promoting the high-quality development of the cultural industry.The film production firms are characterized by "high investment,problematic mortgages,and high risk" due to their significant capital investment,lack of mortgageable assets,and strong information asymmetry.In the financial system led by banks,film production enterprises,especially the numerous small-and medium-sized ones,are often marginalized by traditional financial institutions in the process of financing.And the problems of difficult,expensive and inefficient financing are becoming increasingly serious.In recent years,the government has started to vigorously promote the structural reform of the financial supply side,advocating the informatization and digitalization advantages of financial technology to increase the effective supp ly of financial services for film production enterprises,in an attempt to alleviate their financing problems from the capital supply side.The birth of financial technology has brought new opportunities to alleviate the financing problems of film producti on enterprises.The advantages of financial technology in information acquisition,processing and sharing are conducive to increasing the quality of information disclosure and the permeability of credit supply,facilitating bank competition,alleviating the problem of information asymmetry,increasing the financial accessibility and diversity of film production enterprises,increasing the ir financing capacity,and thus alleviating their credit constraints.Relying on advanced technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence,financial technology can identify effective capital needs,simplify and speed up the credit approval process and transaction process,shorten the lending time,and help reduce information searching costs,customer acquisition costs,credit extraction costs,labor costs,transaction costs and credit risks for financial institutions,thereby reducing the cost of financing for film production enterprises.The application of advanced communication technologies can accelerat e the flow of information elements,enhance the degree of financial marketization and the ability to integrate resources in the capital market,help unblock the information and credit pain points of film production enterprises,meet the small scale and hig h frequency capital needs of film production enterprises,and thus improve their financing efficiency.Existing studies mainly focus on analyzing the economic impact of financial technology development and the financing problems of film production companies and their causes.Theoretical and empirical studies on the impact of financial technology development on financing of film production companies are relatively scarce.Therefore,based on the current situation of financing of film production enterprises and financial technology development,this article systematically compares classical theories and related literature,summarizes the financing problems of film production enterprises and their causes as well as the functional advantages of financial technology,builds a theoretical model and analytical framework for financial technology development to affect financing of film production enterprises,and constructs the panel fixed-effect model,systematic GMM model,Tobit model and double-difference model.Using the financial data of film production enterprises from2011 to 2020 in the Tonghuashun i Fin D database,daily trading data of listed companies,data on the registration of Chinese industrial and commercial enterprises,searching results of Baidu,the financial institution license information provided by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission,the financial technology development index,and provincial and prefecture-level city panel data,the multi-dimensional effects and impact mechanisms of financial technology development on the financing of film production enterprises are empirically assessed.It also examines the heterogeneous impact of financial technology development on the financing of film production enterprises in terms of their creditwo rthiness,enterprise characteristics and life cycle.Through theoretical analysis and empirical research,the specific findings are as follows:Firstly,financial technology development helps to alleviate the financing constraints of film production enterprises.The results of the impact mechanism test indicate that information asymmetry,financial supply capacity and banking competition are important mechanisms through which financial technology development alleviates the financing constraints of film production companies.Information asymmetry and financial supply capability play a partly mediating effect in the process of financial technology development affecting the financing constraints of film production companies,while competition among banking fi nancial institutions plays a fully mediating effect in the process of financial technology development affecting the financing constraints of film production companies.Further analysis reveals that financial technology development helps to alleviate the financing constraints of film production firms with high solvency,high collateralizability and high commercial credit,while it has no signif icant effect on that with low solvency,low collateralizability and low commercial credit.Secondly,financial technology development significantly reduces the financi ng cost of film production companies.The results of the impact mechanism test show that financial technology development reduces the financing cost of film production companies mainly through the depth of use and digitization.The cost of information searching and the level of risk-taking of film production enterprises are important channels through which financial technology development affects the financing cost of film production enterprises in China.Th e results of the heterogeneity analysis show that financial technology development significantly reduces the financing costs of non-state owned,small-and medium-sized film production enterprises,but has no significant impact on the financing costs of st ate-owned and large-sized film production enterprises.Financial technology development helps reduce the financing costs of film production enterprises in the growth and decline stages,but it has no significant impact on the financing costs of film produc tion enterprises in the start-up and maturity stages.Thirdly,financial technology development can significantly improve the financing efficiency of film production enterprises,mainly through the technical effect and the capital market integration effect.The results of the threshold effect test show that there is a threshold effect of financial technology develop ment on the financing efficiency of film production enterprises,with regional innovation capability,the level of the digital economy development and the market institutional environment as important threshold variables.When the threshold variable is innovation capability,the effect of fintech development on the financing efficiency of film production enterprises increases significantly with the rise of regional innovation capability.When the threshold variables are digital economy development and marke t institutional environment,financial technology development has a significant enhancing effect on the financing efficiency of film production enterprises,if and only if the digital economy development and market institutional environment index are higher than the threshold value.Based on the above findings,this article concludes with recommendations and countermeasures from policymakers,financial institutions,and fi lm production companies.They are favorable to rationally encouraging the development of financial technology,optimizing the quality and efficiency of financial services,and resolving the financing issues of film production firms.