The Influence Of Internet Use On Residents' Investment Participation Behavior

According to the 44 th CNNIC statistical report on Internet development in China,As of December 2019,there were 85.4 million Internet users in China,increasing the Internet penetration rate to 61.2 percent.The popularization and widespread use of the Internet has changed People's Daily living habits and behavior,and has had an important impact on the national economy.The Internet has broaden the channels of communication,expanded the social interaction,is also had a significant effect on people's economic decision-making.With the rapid development and popularization of Internet,the investment of Chinese residents is increasing year by year.According to China Household Finance survey report,Relevant data show that,since 2013,the number of risky financial assets invested by Chinese residents has increased rapidly,and the number of effective accounts of Chinese stocks has basically the same growth trend as the number of Internet users.Does the use of Internet promote the investment participation of Chinese residents? What are the specific impact mechanism? The answers to the above questions have important implications for improving the investment participation rate of Chinese residents and promoting the healthy development of financial market in China.On the premise of above background,based on the existing research,social interaction theory and transaction cost theory,using the data of CGSS2012,2013 and 2015,constructs a probit model to investigate the impact of internet use on residents' investment participation behavior,and demonstrates its impact mechanism from two aspects of "information channel" and "social interaction" by using intermediary test method,and compare the Internet influence the behavior of using investment in urban and rural residents to participate in the gap.In this paper,it is found that Internet use has a significant positive impact on residents' investment participation behavior.Residents with higher frequency of Internet use have a higher probability to participate in risk asset investment.This conclusion is still significant after considering endogenous factors and rare event deviation and using instrumental variables for robustness test.Internet use mainly influences residents' investment participation behavior by expanding social interaction,and the intermediary effect accounts for about 9.95% of the total effect,while the intermediary effect of Internet use as information transmission channel is not significant.The heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of Internet use on investment participation is more significant in urban areas,while the mediating effect of social interaction is more obvious in rural areas.In terms of other control variables,age,education,income and regional economic status all have a positive influence on investment participation,while marital status,ethnicity and political status have no significant influence on investment participation.According to the above conclusion,this paper puts forward the corresponding policy enlightenment: the government should vigorously promote the development of the Internet,guide the innovative development of network finance,pay attention to information supervision,reduce the misleading of false information to investors;Financial institutions should attach great importance to the impact of Internet use on social interaction and carry out network publicity for rural residents to improve the participation rate of investment.Individual investors should be rational,not blindly follow the trend,and invest cautiously.