Effect of digital inclusive finance on environmental efficiency of Chinese industry

China's industrial economic model of high emissions and low efficiency has caused a series of environmental problems. Improving energy efficiency is an inevitable choice to solve the dual dilemma of pollution and energy shortage and to achieve carbon peak and neutrality. It is difficult to achieve green development solely through traditional governance; therefore, digital inclusive finance (DIF) is considered a new measure to help the green transformation of China's industry. Based on the assessment of industrial environmental efficiency (IEE) of 30 provinces from 2011 to 2021 by combining the super-efficiency EBM model and the group frontier technology considering provincial heterogeneity, the paper investigates the impact of DIF on the environmental efficiency of Chinese industry and its internal mechanism. The results show that DIF has a driving effect on industrial green transformation, especially the deep development of DIF, which can play a positive role in environmental efficiency for a long time and can give full play to the targeting feature of big data, focusing on regions with serious pollution, financing difficulties, high natural resource, and poor financial endowment. DIF can reduce enterprise financing costs and drive industrial innovation; however, the path of promoting industrial green transformation through regional servitization needs to be improved. In addition, under appropriate regulatory constraints, DIF has a more positive driving effect on the environmental efficiency of the Chinese industry. This article is useful to address the issue of industrial green transformation by interdisciplinary research.