The Impact Of Digital Inclusive Finance On Rural Residents’ Consumption

The continuous growth of rural residents’ consumption is an important cornerstone of the country’s sustained economic take-off.Digital inclusive finance,based on the blockchain,cloud computing and other digital technologies,embodies the characteristics of low cost.This stands in stark contrast to the traditional financial model,which drastically reduces the availability of financial services for rural populations with a relatively low income.However,this model offers wide coverage and robust sustainability.The provision of more thorough,exact,and speedy financial services has become a vital instrument in bridging the gap in consumption between rural people and achieving China’s “agriculture,rural areas,and farmers”policy.This paper conducts an in-depth empirical study on the relationship between digital inclusive finance and rural residents’ consumption inequality,based on the CFPS(China Family Panel Studies)data from 2014 to 2018 and the Peking University Digital Inclusive Finance Index.Using rural residents’ consumption inequality as the entry point,the research results show that digital inclusive finance can alleviate the problem of consumption inequality among rural residents.The transmission mechanism test shows that digital inclusive finance can effectively improve rural residents’ payment convenience,alleviate their liquidity constraints,and suppress their tendency of precautionary savings,thereby effectively mitigating the problem of consumption inequality among rural residents.The moderating effect indicates that the education level and non-agricultural employment of rural residents strengthen the restraining effect of digital inclusive finance on the consumption inequality among rural residents.The heterogeneity analysis shows that digital inclusive finance significantly inhibits consumption inequality among rural residents in the Yangtze River Basin and nonYangtze River Basin,as well as in eastern,central,and western rural areas,but its inhibitory effect is more obvious in non-developed areas such as non-Yangtze River Basin and central and western regions.For different types of consumption categories,digital inclusive finance exacerbates the consumption inequality of rural residents in subsistence-type consumption,but alleviates the consumption inequality of rural areas in education,entertainment,health,and other development type consumption.Compared with previous research,this paper makes the following marginal explorations in theory and methods: firstly,in terms of research methods,this paper exploratively uses micro household data to calculate the relative deprivation index to measure the degree of consumption inequality among rural residents,which reflects the consumption inequality more accurately and reveals the impact of digital inclusive finance on rural residents’ consumption more precisely.Secondly,in terms of research content,this paper conducts a relatively complete study on the mechanism of the impact of digital inclusive finance on consumption inequality of rural residents,and confirms the inhibitory effect of digital inclusive finance on consumption inequality of rural residents through various mechanism paths such as transmission mechanism and moderation effect,as well as regional heterogeneity characteristics.This expands the research boundary of the impact of digital inclusive finance on consumption inequality of rural residents and has certain guiding significance for solving the consumption vulnerability of China’s long-tail population.