Does digital finance promote manufacturing servitization: Micro evidence from China

China's manufacturing sector is pursuing the connotative growth of service-oriented transformation. The vigorous development of digital finance has effectively promoted manufacturing upgrading. Using the 2011–2018 data for listed enterprises and the Peking University Digital Financial Inclusion Index, we exploited the causal effect of digital finance on manufacturing servitization. The results showed that digital finance has a significant positive impact on the servitization of manufacturing industry in China. And we investigated how digital finance may promote manufacturing servitization through increasing the intensity of innovation and enhancing the level of digitalization. Furthermore, we found that digital finance has better promoted the servitization of enterprises in the central and west region, labor-intensive industries, high-tech sector, and private-owned ones. In closing, we articulated enterprises' willingness and dynamic time effect of manufacturing servitization. The role of digital finance is in line with the law of diminishing marginal utility, but an obvious superimposing effect is formed in the lagging three-period timeline.