Whether Digital Inclusive Finance Has Promoted The Upgrading Of Consumer Consumption

The world is undergoing major changes unseen in a century,and China’s status as the world’s second largest economy is under threat.In order to transform China from a major economic power into an economic powerhouse,the Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and The State Council on Improving the System and Mechanism for Promoting Consumption and Further Stimulating the Consumption Potential of Residents were published in September 2018,officially proposing consumption upgrading at the national level.In December 2022,the Outline of the Strategic Plan for Expanding Domestic Demand(2022-2035)was promulgated,which calls for accelerating the overall upgrading of consumption.Although the consumption level of Chinese residents has been increasing in recent years,and the consumption structure has quite a trend of upgrading,there are still some problems in some fields in our country,such as lack of quality supply and blocked consumption scenes.The people’s willingness to consume has been inhibited,and there is still a large room for the rise of consumption optimization and upgrading.Therefore,it is of practical significance to study the consumption upgrading.At present,many scholars have conducted research on the consumption upgrading.The research shows that China is in the period of consumption transformation and upgrading.Internet technology,consumer finance,upgrading of industrial structure,improving circulation efficiency and other factors can accelerate the pace of consumption upgrading.Since the concept of "digital inclusive finance" was formally proposed,researches on digital inclusive finance and consumption upgrading have gradually increased.However,compared with the researches on the relationship between other factors and consumption upgrading,there is still a large space for researches on the relationship between digital inclusive finance and residents’ consumption upgrading.From the perspective of consumers,most of the existing studies have explored the intermediary mechanism of digital inclusive finance affecting consumption upgrading,while there are few literatures considering intermediary mechanism from enterprises and circulation links.This is the direction of this paper to find the intermediary mechanism,which complements the path of digital inclusive finance affecting consumption upgrading.This paper first collates the relevant literature,explores the shortcomings of the existing research,and points out the innovation points of this paper.Then the paper theoretically analyzes the effect of digital inclusive finance on residents’ consumption upgrading,demonstrates three action paths,and puts forward the hypothesis of this paper.On the basis of theoretical analysis,this paper plots and analyzes the relevant data of digital financial inclusion index and consumption upgrading in provinces in the past ten years,and captures the time variation trend of these two variables on the whole.Then,based on the inter-provincial panel data from 2011 to 2020,this paper builds a fixed effect model,analyzes the relationship between digital inclusive finance and consumer consumption upgrading,and adds the square term and the lag term of the digital inclusive finance index to test whether there is an inflection point and whether the impact of digital inclusive finance on consumption upgrading.Then,the research samples were divided according to different criteria,and the heterogeneity test was carried out.Finally,the empirical test was conducted on the three ways that digital inclusive finance affects consumption upgrading.Based on the empirical analysis,this paper draws the following conclusions:(1)Digital inclusive finance can significantly promote the upgrading of consumer consumption,and the impact has a time lag.(2)The impact of digital inclusive finance on consumer consumption upgrading has urban-rural heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity.(3)The impact of digital inclusive finance on consumer consumption upgrading is moderated by the income gap between urban and rural residents.(4)Industrial structure upgrading and enterprise innovation level improvement are two intermediary mechanisms for digital inclusive finance to promote residents’ upgrading.In circulation innovation,the increase of circulation scale and circulation efficiency can simultaneously promote the upgrading of residents’ consumption scale and structure,but the increase of circulation channels and optimization of circulation structure can only lead to the upgrading of consumption scale.Finally,in order to fully release domestic consumption potential and enhance the endogenous driver of economic development,China should accelerate the construction of digital financial infrastructure,improve related policies for digital financial inclusion,deeply promote supply-side reform,promote the development of the logistics industry,and accelerate the digitization construction of financial institutions.