Social Capital,Credit Constraints And Farmer Consumption Behavior

Consumption is an important way to meet people’s yearning for a better life.Stimulating the rural consumption market,releasing farmers’ consumption potential,and promoting the expansion and upgrading of rural residents’ consumption is an important direction for China’s rural development in the future.However,at present,the consumption demand of most rural areas in China is still insufficient.The low consumption level in rural areas has seriously restricted the improvement of the overall consumption level of the country and the high-quality development under the "new normal" of China’s rural economy.One of the important reasons is that the credit caused by the imperfect development of rural financial market has seriously affected the consumption upgrading of farmers.Rural China is a Chinese "relational society" based on blood and geography.Social capital has become an important carrier to solve farmers’ credit constraints.So how does social capital,as an important resource for farmers,alleviate credit constraints? How does social capital stimulate farmers’ internal consumption power? Is there a transmission chain between social capital,credit constraints and farmers’ consumption? These problems are worthy of our in-depth study.Based on this,using the large sample data of China Household tracking survey(CFPS),this paper brings social capital into the research framework under the background of farmers’ credit constraints and insufficient consumption,and explores the relationship between the three,in order to correctly evaluate social capital,credit constraints and their impact on household consumption behavior,Guide and promote rural residents to continuously improve their consumption level and quality.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Taking the human gift expenditure as the index to measure the social capital of farmers,it is found that the annual human gift fund of sample farmers reaches 3920 yuan,accounting for 6.1% of the total expenditure,and 89.6% of farmers have more or less human gift expenditure,which means that under the realistic background of "human society" in China,human gift expenditure has become a necessary expenditure for farmers to maintain social relations;(2)36.7% of the sample farmers have loans.Among these farmers,the average loan amount reaches 122100 yuan,indicating that China’s farmers have a large demand for funds at present;Relationship lending plays an important role in China’s rural areas,which reflects the importance of social capital in lending;63.3% of the farmers did not have loans,and 35.3% of the farmers said that they had encountered rejection of loans,which reflected the credit constraints to a certain extent.(3)The total annual consumption expenditure of farmers is 54591 yuan,including 34320 yuan for survival and 20271 yuan for improvement.It can be seen that at present,China’s farmers’ consumption expenditure is still mainly survival expenditure,which is not conducive to the quality improvement and transformation of China’s rural consumption market,but also means that there is still a lot of growth space for the rural consumption market;(4)The econometric model of social capital and farmers’ consumption behavior is established.The regression results show that social capital has a positive impact on the family’s consumption level and consumption structure,which is significant at the level of 1%.For every 1000 yuan increase in the expenditure of farmers’ human courtesy,the consumption level increases by 2490 yuan,and the proportion of improved consumption increases by 0.247 percentage points,It shows that social capital plays an important role in economic and social activities and can play a positive role in the expansion,quality and upgrading of rural residents’ consumption.In terms of control variables,gender,age,education,health status,family size,family income,family savings and fixed assets all have a significant impact on Farmers’ consumption behavior.(5)Based on the intermediary effect model,this paper empirically analyzes the intermediary role of credit constraints in social capital and farmers’ consumption behavior.The regression results show that social capital can indeed improve farmers’ consumption level and consumption structure by alleviating farmers’ credit constraints,which also reflects the importance of the smooth flow of rural credit in promoting farmers’ consumption.