Maturity Mismatched Investment, Digital Financial Inclusion, and Digital Orientation : Evidence from China

This study examines how maturity mismatched behavior influence firms’ digital orientation, and the moderate effect of digital financial inclusion (DFI) on maturity mismatched behavior. We use a sample of over 3,000 Chinese listed firms for the period 2011-2020, we provide new evidence on the “passive mismatch view” from China. We find that firms’ maturity mismatched investment could impede its digital orientation and the DFI further weaken the negative relation between firms’ maturity mismatched investment and digital orientation. We further examine the negative relation between maturity mismatched investment and digital orientation under the agency hypothesis, which demonstrate that maturity mismatched investment could digital orientation for firms with more agent problems. We find that firms’ maturity mismatched investment could impede its digital orientation through weakening managerial attitude towards potential risks