Study On The Scale Effect Of Consumer Credit To Promote The Upgrading Of Urban Residents’ Consumption Structure

China is in a critical period of transforming the way of economic growth dynamics,and in addressing problems such as insufficient economic growth momentum during the epidemic,we need to focus on the overall upgrading of the consumption structure level.As a product of consumer finance,consumer credit has smoothed the consumption transition between different life cycles of consumers and become a powerful way to promote the upgrading of consumption structure.The study of the role of consumer credit in promoting the upgrading of consumption structure and its scale effect can not only enrich and expand the theoretical basis of the relationship between consumer credit and consumption structure,but also provide an empirical reference for improving the consumption structure of Chinese residents and shifting the economy to high-quality growth.This paper compares domestic and international literature on consumer credit and consumption structure,and then develops a theoretical and empirical analysis of consumer credit to promote the upgrading of consumption structure,taking into account the research trends at home and abroad.In terms of theory,the thesis firstly introduces the significance and background of this paper,the research content and methodology as well as the innovation and shortcomings,and explains the concepts of consumer credit and consumption structure.These theories include life-cycle consumption theory,persistent income theory,precautionary savings theory,liquidity constraint theory,and impact mechanisms including intertemporal consumption smoothing,crowding-out and compensation effects,and consumption guarantee effects.In Chapters 5 and 6,we apply the fixed-effects model and random-effects model to test the relationship between consumption credit and consumption structure.Firstly,we use the panel data of 31 provinces in China to regress the relationship between consumer credit and consumption structure,and conduct robustness tests and regional heterogeneity tests to verify the promotion effect of consumer credit on the upgrading of urban residents’ consumption structure.The three groups of A,B and C,where the scale of consumption credit increases sequentially,and two groups of D and E,where the scale of consumption credit increases sequentially under the same cross-section,are each regressed.Finally,the eight types of consumer expenditures in turn are substituted into the model as explanatory variables to explore the reasons for the size effect of consumer credit.The innovation of this paper is that the consumption structure index used in this paper includes all categories of consumer spending,namely food,clothing,housing,household,health care,transportation and communication,entertainment and education,and other consumption.In addition,the relationship between the two has been studied in the literature only focusing on the promotion effect but not the scale effect.This paper classifies the samples in two dimensions,time series and cross-sectional,based on the size of consumer credit,and conducts regressions in sub-samples to reveal the scale effect of consumer credit in promoting the upgrading of urban residents’ consumption structure.This paper finds that:(1)China’s current consumption structure level is improving year by year,and there is still more room for upgrading;(2)China’s consumer credit business is developing fast,but the unbalanced development is obvious,and this gap is gradually narrowing in recent years;(3)the development of consumer credit can promote the upgrading of urban residents’ consumption structure,and it has a non-linear increasing scale effect,and consumer credit can only have this promoting effect after reaching a certain scale;(4)the scale effect of consumer credit on the consumption structure is through two types of consumption expenditure: household goods and services,and education,culture and entertainment.(4)the scale effect of consumer credit on consumption structure is carried out through two types of consumption expenditure,namely,household goods and services and education,culture and entertainment.Based on the above conclusions,this paper argues that China should vigorously develop formal consumer credit,enrich the types of business,improve the service level of consumer credit business,expand consumer credit application scenarios,lower its access threshold,and increase support for the consumer credit market in the central and western regions;create a good and complete consumer protection system to protect the legitimate rights and interests of financial consumption;and enhance consumer finance education for residents to cultivate a harmonious consumption concept in the new era,so as to improve the consumption structure.