| The issue of the "three rural areas" has always been a key concern of the State Council of the Central Committee of the CPC,and is an important issue in achieving rural revitalisation,common prosperity and the well-being of farmers.Although the welfare of rural residents has been improved to a certain extent,there are still problems such as a low level of welfare,an obvious gap between the welfare of urban and rural residents and spatial imbalance.In recent years,digital inclusive finance has played an important role in helping to revitalise the countryside,offering new possibilities for improving the welfare of rural residents.Through digital technology,digital inclusive finance has widened the breadth of coverage of financial services,deepened their depth of use and increased digitisation,better meeting the financial needs of rural residents.In the context of promoting rural revitalisation and accelerating the modernisation of agriculture and rural areas,it is particularly necessary to explore the relationship between digital inclusive finance and the welfare of rural residents.This paper selects 31 provinces(excluding Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan)from 2011 to 2020 as the research sample,and adopts the Benuli-Nash social welfare function method to measure the welfare level of rural residents;secondly,uses the σ convergence model,spatial exploration analysis method and non-parametric kernel density estimation method to analyse the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of digital inclusive finance and the welfare of rural residents;then,uses the systematic GMM estimation model to examine the impact of digital inclusive finance and its dimensions on the welfare of rural residents;furthermore,the spatial Durbin model is applied to explore the spatial effects of digital inclusive finance on the welfare of rural residents;finally,countermeasures are proposed around digital inclusive finance and the welfare of rural residents.The main findings of this paper are as follows:(1)Farmers’ welfare itself has a significant positive externality effect,and there is a significant spatial effect of digital inclusive finance on the welfare of rural residents,and the direct effect is more significant than the indirect effect.From the spatial regression results,the spatial autoregressive coefficient ρ of rural residents’ welfare is 0.314,which is significant at the 1% significance level,indicating that farmers’ welfare itself can significantly lead to the improvement of the welfare level of surrounding farmers and has a positive externality;the estimated coefficient of the direct effect of digital inclusive finance on rural residents’ welfare is 1.957,which passes the 1% significance test and the estimated coefficient of the indirect effect is 0.992,which passed the 10% significance test,indicating that digital inclusive finance has a significant direct impact on the improvement of farmers’ welfare level and a significant indirect contribution to the welfare of rural residents,i.e.there is a spatial spillover effect.Meanwhile,the above results were obtained by using the construction of instrumental variables and replacement of spatial matrix again,indicating that the conclusion is robust.(2)Digital inclusive finance as a whole significantly contributes to the welfare of rural residents,but there are differences in the significant levels of sub-dimensional effects.In terms of the specific mechanism of action and regression results,the estimated values of the impact of digital inclusive finance on the welfare of rural residents are 1.394 and 0.838 respectively,both passing the 5% significance test,while the estimated value of the impact of digitalization on the welfare of rural residents is 0.752,which does not pass the significance test,indicating that digital inclusive finance significantly contributes to the welfare of rural residents by widening the coverage and deepening the depth of use of financial services.The estimated value of the impact of digital inclusion on the welfare of rural residents is 0.752,which does not pass the significance test,indicating that digital inclusion significantly contributes to the welfare of rural residents by widening the coverage of financial services and deepening the depth of use of financial services.(3)The trend of changes in the time-series characteristics of digital inclusive finance is inconsistent with the welfare of rural residents,as shown by the fact that the mean value of the overall digital inclusive finance index increased from 2011 to 2020 from 334.823 to34.151,with the standard deviation changing from 18.306 to 34.151,showing its rapid growth trend,and the gap between the development levels of various provinces widened year by year;while the welfare of rural residents increased from 0.069 to 0.069 during the sample period.0.069 increased from 0.359 to 0.359,indicating that the overall level of its development improved and the regional gap narrowed.(4)The trends of changes in the spatial characteristics of digital inclusive finance and rural residents’ welfare are also inconsistent,specifically: the total digital inclusive finance index first shows a polarization effect during the sample period,and then the polarization effect disappears;while the rural residents’ welfare develops from high in Beijing and Zhejiang to the emergence of the agglomeration development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration,and the polarization effect continues to deepen.The main innovations of this paper are: firstly,it constructs an analytical framework for the impact of digital inclusive finance on the welfare of rural residents,expanding and deepening the theory of inclusive finance,the theory of welfare economy and the theory of externalities;secondly,it selects some quantifiable indicators of non-economic welfare and improves the indicator system for measuring the welfare of rural residents;thirdly,it explores the effect mechanism and spatial effect of digital inclusive finance on the welfare of rural residents.Third,it explores the mechanism and spatial effects of digital inclusive finance on the welfare of rural residents,which is somewhat new in terms of research content. |
