The Impact Of Digital Inclusive Finance On The Consumption Gap Between Urban And Rural Areas In Henan Province

The level of consumption not only reflects the quality of life,but also reflects the happiness of people’s life to a certain extent.It also plays an important role in economic growth.Therefore,consumption is an important indicator that we should pay attention to.At present,consumption in China is also playing a role of ballast in stabilizing economic operation.For example,under the impact of COVID-19 in 2020,the supply side and the demand side both had a great impact on China’s economy,but the contribution rate of China’s final consumption expenditure to GDP reached 54.3%,which had a significant role in stimulating economic growth.Henan Province has a large population,and its consumption contribution ranks among the top in China.In 2020,Henan Province ranked fifth among all kinds of consumption contributions,and made a great contribution to China’s economic growth.In recent years,with the development of internet,communication technology and big data,digital Inclusive Finance also obtained fast development,which has impacted the original consumption concept and consumption mode of residents to some extent.It had a great impact on consumption,and also promoted the consumption to expand and upgrade.However,due to the long-standing gap between urban and rural areas,the unbalanced distribution of financial resources and unbalanced Consumption gap are still exist.How to improve the consumption level of rural residents,narrow the consumption gap between urban and rural areas,and improve residents’ happiness are the key content of the study of consumption.Especially under the background of big data,the combination of Inclusive Finance and digital technology has its own unique advantages,such as improving the coverage and depth of financial services,providing equal and effective financial resources for rural residents,which will become a new direction and stage of financial development.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the impact of digital Inclusive Finance on Residents’ consumption gap.This paper takes Henan Province as an example.Based on reading a lot of domestic and foreign literature,summarizing the existing research results,this paper selects the digital inclusive finance index released by the digital finance research center of Peking University to measure the development level of digital Inclusive Finance in Henan Province.Meanwhile timely following up the development of digital Inclusive Finance in Henan Province,and making a comparative analysis from multiple dimensions,in order to have a comprehensive understanding of its development.In addition,the Theil index is selected to measure the consumption gap between urban and rural areas.Based on relevant consumption theories and financial theories,the influence mechanism of digital Inclusive Finance on the consumption gap between urban and rural residents is analyzed.Then,using the data of prefecture level cities in Henan Province from 2011 to 2019 for empirical analysis.It is concluded that digital inclusive finance can narrow the consumption gap between urban and rural residents.After completing the benchmark regression,robustness test and impact mechanism test,this paper continues to further explore,mainly including income gap and different types of consumption gap.Finally,this paper establishes an intermediary effect model to test the intermediary role of income gap.The research shows that:(1)digital Inclusive Finance has significantly reduced the consumption gap between urban and rural residents.Using the three dimensions under the total index(coverage,use depth and digitization degree)as explanatory variables proves that the results are robust;(2)When selecting the sub indicators of payment,insurance and credit for regression,the payment and credit indexes are significantly negative at the level of 1% and the insurance index is significantly negative at the level of10%,indicating that there are three ways for digital Inclusive Finance to affect the consumption gap between urban and rural areas,namely accelerating the payment speed,expanding the scale of credit and reducing preventive savings.(3)According to the category of consumer goods,the urban-rural consumption gap is divided into survival consumption gap,enjoyment consumption gap and development consumption gap.Further explore the difference of the role of digital Inclusive Finance on different types of consumption gap,and come to the conclusion that digital inclusive finance can significantly improve the survival consumption gap,enjoyment consumption gap and development consumption gap,and has a more obvious role in narrowing the enjoyment gap;(4)The results of intermediary effect model show that digital inclusive finance can indirectly affect the consumption gap through the income gap.It confirms the existence of intermediary effect mechanism.Then,according to different types of consumption gap,this paper analyzes the difference of intermediary effect.The results show that the urban-rural income gap plays a partial intermediary role in the negative impact of the development of digital Inclusive Finance on the survival consumption gap and enjoyment consumption gap between urban and rural residents,and plays a complete intermediary role in the impact of the development consumption gap,but it changes the original negative effect of digital Inclusive Finance on the development consumption gap between urban and rural residents.Finally,based on the research conclusions of this paper,combined with the actual situation of Henan Province,this paper provides some suggestions,such as improving the digital inclusive financial development system,strengthen the construction of rural digital finance,paying attention to improving the income of rural residents and upgrading the consumption level of residents.