Saving the World by Being Green with Fintech: Exploring the Contradictions Inherent in the Case of Ant Forest

ABSTRACT

The conflict between climate change and economic growth is one of the most significant dilemmas of our era. Under the prevalent discourse of sustainable development and green economy, many believe that market-based approaches can address environmental problems under the current capitalist economic regime. This article aims to analyse Ant Forest, a gamified green initiative launched by the biggest fintech company in China, to combat climate change through cultivating users’ green lifestyles. Based on semi-structured interviews with the game-users, the paper argues that there is an inconsistency between the environmental value of Ant Forest and the real impact it has on the participants’ consumption behaviour. As a capitalist green initiative based on consumption and market forces, Ant Forest reflects the basic logic of competition and expansion. In addition, it enhances the users’ reliance on its related business entities and further alienates the users from the rest of nature by creating a knowledge gap that impedes its users from fully knowing the environmental implications of their consumption behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Ant forest
• fintech
• China
• green capitalism
• tree-planting

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their immense help in improving the quality of this paper, and would like to express her deep appreciation to Nicholas Loubere, Anja Nygren and Markus Kröger, for their great support and encouragement during the research and writing process.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ant Group, formerly known as Ant Financial, is an affiliated company of Alibaba group which is the biggest e-commerce company in China. It has become a comprehensive fintech company specialising in online consuming credit and other micro-credit services after a reorganization of internal business sectors in 2014. In September 2020, Ant Financial changed its business name into Ant Group.

2 Since late 2018, users can also choose to virtually claim a small piece of land in one of the conservation areas co-founded by Ant Financial and its partner entities.

3 According to Ant Forest, the amount of energy produced from each transaction/action is calculated based on a scientific computation system provided by Beijing Environmental Resource Exchange. Interestingly, Ant Group is one of its major organisational shareholders.

4 Alipay terminated partnership with OFO after 10 Oct. 2018, and from then on, using OFO could not generate green energy points anymore. Now, only HelloBike supports “green energy points” accumulation. This evidence shows that “consuming with Ant Financial” is an important criterion in defining “green consumption” in Ant Forest.

5 Ant Group’s IPO case was rejected by the Chinese government. Before the shutdown, the primary capital markets in Shanghai and Hong Kong valued Ant Group at $313 billion in total. See: https://www.ft.com/content/928dbbfa-a242-4986-a0e6-490fb542be77

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Birgit Rausing Language Programme.