Firm-level nature dependence and access to bank credit

Firms increasingly rely on natural systems and ecosystem services, but it remains unclear whether this dependence affects how financial resources are allocated in the real economy. Firms with higher nature dependence rely more on natural conditions such as water supply, soil quality, climate conditions, and biological resources, which can change over time and are not fully controlled by firms. When such changes disrupt input supply, production, costs, delivery, or sales receipts, firms' operating cash flows become less stable, making it harder for banks to predict repayment capacity and leading banks to provide less credit. This study examines whether firm-level nature dependence affects access to bank credit. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2023 and a firm and year fixed effects design, we find that nature dependence is significantly negatively associated with access to bank credit. This result remains robust to alternative variable measurements, sample period adjustments, placebo tests, and instrumental variable estimation. Mechanism analysis shows that operating cash flow volatility serves as a repayment risk channel: firms with higher nature dependence exhibit more volatile operating cash flows, which in turn weakens their access to bank credit. We further find that environmental information disclosure quality mitigates the adverse effect of nature dependence, suggesting that disclosure helps banks better assess firms' environmental exposure, governance responses, and risk management capacity. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative effect is stronger among non-state-owned enterprises and firms in heavily polluting industries. These findings indicate that nature dependence is not only an ecological or operational issue, but also a source of financial risk that affects bank credit allocation. The study contributes to research on financial risks related to nature and highlights the importance of incorporating nature dependence into environmental risk assessment and credit evaluation.