A Study Of The Impact Of Digital Finance Use On Farm Entrepreneurship

The "three rural" issue is a fundamental issue related to the people’s livelihood of the country.In 2014,Premier Li Keqiang put forward the slogan of "Mass Innovation,Mass Entrepreneurship",followed by a series of national policy documents to support rural entrepreneurship.With the rapid development of big data,cloud computing and other emerging financial technologies,digital finance has also risen.Relying on the Internet and with the help of emerging technologies,digital finance can effectively lower the threshold of financial services,solve the problem of "mission drift" of traditional financial institutions,and alleviate the financial exclusion suffered by the financially disadvantaged for a long time.Compared with traditional finance,digital finance has greatly improved the coverage and penetration of financial services,easing the credit constraints of agricultural production entities represented by small farmers,and thus promoting innovation and entrepreneurship among farmers.In this context,this paper uses 1525 farm household research data from five provinces of Yunnan,Guizhou,Sichuan,Chongqing,and Hunan to deeply analyze the digital financial use and entrepreneurship and financial needs of farm households,and summarize the real-world problems of digital financial use affecting farm household entrepreneurship.In the empirical analysis part,this paper tests the effect of digital financial use on farm household entrepreneurship by constructing a Probit model,and further investigates the differences in the effects of digital financial use on different types of farm household entrepreneurship and the differences in the effects of different types of digital financial use on farm household entrepreneurship,and then uses the IV-Probit model,linear probability model(LPM),propensity score matching method(PSM)and a reduced experimental sample to verify the robustness of the results.Meanwhile,the mechanisms by which digital financial use affects farmers’ entrepreneurship are subdivided into three mechanisms,namely,reducing the cost of financial access,alleviating credit constraints,and improving information availability,and are tested empirically.Finally,the heterogeneous effects of digital finance use on farmers’ entrepreneurship are investigated from multiple latitudes based on the differences in farmers’ age,education,social capital,and risk preferences.The main findings of this paper are as follows:(1)Digital financial use stimulates farmers’ entrepreneurial enthusiasm and plays a significant role in promoting farmers’ entrepreneurship.(2)Digital financial use significantly promotes farm-related entrepreneurship,non-farm entrepreneurship,survival entrepreneurship,and development entrepreneurship,and the impact of digital financial use on non-farm entrepreneurship is significantly higher than farm-related entrepreneurship,and the impact on survival entrepreneurship is significantly higher than development entrepreneurship.(3)In terms of impact mechanism,digital financial use can promote farm entrepreneurship by reducing the cost of financial access,alleviating credit constraints,and improving information availability.(4)In terms of heterogeneity,the effects of digital finance use are more significant for farmers in the low age group,low human capital farmers,high social capital farmers,and risk-neutral farmers.Based on the above research findings,this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations:(1)accelerate the development of rural digital finance.First,we should improve the level of rural network information services and continuously increase the construction of rural communication facilities Second,we should strengthen the training of financial knowledge for rural residents and improve the digital literacy and financial literacy of farmers.(2)Bridging the digital divide among the financially disadvantaged in rural areas and improving the ability of farmers in rural areas,especially the financially disadvantaged,to use digital finance.(3)Promote the digital transformation of traditional financial institutions,continuously expand the connotation of digital finance,enrich digital finance functions,and provide more financial support for entrepreneurial farmers in rural areas.(4)Increase the policy support for farmers’ entrepreneurship.Encourage farmers to combine local characteristics,strive to develop local special industries,continuously optimize the environment for farmers’ entrepreneurship,recruit talents and wisdom for rural entrepreneurship,and vigorously cultivate local talents.