关键词: 供应链金融, 融资效率, 结构效应, 资源效应

Abstract: As the capillaries of the national economy, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises(SMEs) play a key role in employment, innovation, and value creation, and are the source of vitality for high-quality economic development. However, SMEs generally face the obvious challenges, including difficult and expensive financing, insufficient credit-pricing mechanism, and low financing efficiency. Notably, financing efficiency directly restricts the sustainable development of enterprises. The existing studies mainly focus on the impact of corporate governance, information communication, macroeconomic environment, and policies on financing efficiency, but ignore the relationship between supply chain finance and financing efficiency of SMEs. Therefore, this paper deconstructs the mechanism and boundary conditions by which supply chain finance influences financing efficiency of SMEs. The findings not only provide new incremental evidence for this research field, but also offer theoretical support for enhancing the quality and efficiency of supply chain finance to serve the real economy and achieving the goal of SMEs’ high-quality development.
Based on the sample of SMEs listed on ChiNext from 2012 to 2023, this paper analyzes the impact of supply chain finance on the financing efficiency of SMEs. Based on the empirical analysis, this paper finds that supply chain finance can significantly improve the financing efficiency of SMEs. Mechanism tests show that the structure effect of supply chain finance is conducive to accurately matching the capital demand cycle of enterprises and improving the financing efficiency of SMEs by adjusting the capital term structure; the resource effect of supply chain finance is conducive to optimizing the resource allocation efficiency mechanism of enterprises and improving the financing efficiency of SMEs by alleviating financing constraints. The internal information environment strengthens the structure effect and resource effect, while the external financial environment only highlights the structure effect. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of supply chain finance on the financing efficiency of SMEs is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises, as well as enterprises situated in the eastern and central regions and those in growth and maturity stage of the corporate life cycle. The economic consequence test shows that SMEs’ participation in supply chain finance can improve their viability by improving financing efficiency.
The paper’s marginal contributions are mainly embodied in three aspects. First, existing studies on financing efficiency have predominantly focused on macroeconomic policies and internal corporate governance. Based on network theory, this paper integrates supply chain finance into the analytical framework of financing efficiency, thereby offering incremental empirical evidence for researchs on the economic consequences of supply chain finance. Second, relying on the moderated mediating model, this paper explores the moderating effect of the internal and external environment on the impact of supply chain finance on financing efficiency by structure effect and resource effect, and clarifies the influence mechanism. Third, this paper investigates the heterogeneous characteristics and market response of the financing effect of supply chain finance, expands the research scope and practical application scenarios of supply chain finance, and provides decision-making support and policy enlightenment for advancing the high-quality development of SMEs and optimizing the financial service system.
This paper proposes management suggestions from the following aspects. First, SMEs should constantly optimize the digital information system, actively participate in supply chain financial activities, adjust the financing term structure, relieve financing constraints, and enhance core competitiveness. Second, the government should cooperate with SMEs to improve the policy support mechanism of enterprise digital transformation and supply chain finance development. The cooperation between government and enterprises should promote the “de-core” supply chain finance digital ecosystem transformation to balance the financing resources of SMEs.

Key words: supply chain finance, financing efficiency, structure effect, resource effect