Research On The Impact Of Fintech On Residents’ Consumption Level And Its Differentiation

In today’s era,the wave of information technology is rapidly sweeping across the globe.From industrial economy to information economy,information technology has gradually become an important factor in promoting global economic and social development,driving various fields such as the financial industry to accelerate their progress towards digitalization.Fintech has improved the efficiency of financial services through technologies such as big data,cloud computing,blockchain and artificial intelligence,and is also changing the consumption habits and concepts of residents.Under the "double-cycle" development model,residential consumption has gradually become an important force driving the development of the national economy,and expanding domestic demand is the key to promoting the new development model.It is of great significance.Based on the existing research literature by scholars at home and abroad,this paper examines the relationship between fintech and the level of resident consumption and its differentiation from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.Firstly,it compares the literature on fintech and consumption at home and abroad.Secondly,the research hypothesis is put forward based on the basic theory of financial function and consumption,and the path of fintech affecting residents’ consumption level is explored theoretically.Finally,combining the development status of fintech and residents’ consumption level in China,the paper constructs indicators of fintech development level and consumption differentiation indicators,and empirically studies the impact of fintech on residents’ consumption level and its differentiation.In the empirical research part,this paper selects annual panel data of 30 provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions across China from 2015 to 2020,uses the level of resident consumption and consumption differentiation as the explanatory variables,constructs the level of fintech development as the core explanatory variables through the entropy value method using Baidu index keywords,and conducts research through a fixed-effects model to firstly study the role of fintech on the level of resident consumption at a national scale Secondly,this paper examines the paths through which fintech affects residents’ consumption levels through a mediating effects model,introducing the mediating variables of economic development level,residents’ income level,industrial structure and urbanization rate to explain regional Finally,this paper examines the impact of fintech on intra-regional consumption differentiation and inter-regional consumption differentiation respectively,based on the development characteristics of residents’ consumption differentiation.Combining theoretical and empirical analyses,this paper draws the following conclusions:(1)Fintech significantly contributes to the improvement of residents’ consumption levels,and the extent of its influence is greatest in the central region,followed by the eastern region and finally the western region,and the extent of its influence on rural areas is greater than that of urban areas;(2)the level of economic development,residents’ income level,industrial structure level and urbanization rate all have mediating effects between Fintech and residents’ consumption levels.(2)There is a mediating effect between the level of economic development,the level of residents’ income,the level of industrial structure and the urbanization rate,with fintech indirectly raising the level of residents’ consumption by promoting regional economic development,raising residents’ income,optimizing the industrial structure and reducing the urbanization rate;(3)At present,China’s residents’ consumption level suffers from uneven regional development and serious consumption differentiation,with large differences in residents’ consumption levels between regions.The development of fintech can help to alleviate the problem of divergence in consumption,and has a significant inhibiting effect on both intra-regional and inter-regional consumption divergence.The innovations and contributions of this paper are:(1)Most existing studies use the Peking University Digital Inclusive Finance Index as a proxy variable for the development level of fintech,but because its compilation method cannot keep up with the times,it has certain limitations and cannot measure the development level of fintech comprehensively.(2)This paper uses the mediating effect model to study the path of fintech influencing residents’ consumption level,by introducing four mediating variables:economic development level,residents’ income level,industrial structure and urbanization rate to explain the regional differences of fintech influencing residents’ consumption level;(3)This paper expands a new research perspective,in view of the serious problem of divergence of residents’ consumption in China,this paper further studies the fintech development index,which can be used to measure the development level of fintech in a more timely and accurate manner.The paper further investigates whether fintech helps to alleviate consumption polarization in view of the serious problem.The paper not only studies the impact of fintech on intra-regional consumption differentiation,but also studies the impact on inter-regional consumption differentiation,which provides new ideas to solve the current problem of serious differentiation of residents’ consumption levels across regions,making the study of the relationship between fintech and residents’ consumption levels more theoretically and practically significant.