A Mechanistic Study of the Impact of Digital Payments on Rural Household Development Resilience

Abstract

China has made advancements in the achievement of the poverty relief goal set by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations. However, the rapidly changing socioeconomic environment and the increasingly growing complication of poverty in rural households make it necessary to enhance rural household development resilience to ensure poverty alleviation. With the rapid development of Internet technology, this paper assesses whether digital payments influence rural household development resilience. Based on it, this study takes rural China as its research area, selects samples of farmers’ household registration as its research object, uses the data recorded by China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) in 2015, 2017, and 2019, and constructs the index of “rural household development resilience” based on the family wellbeing model to empirically test the impact of rural households using mobile payments on development resilience. By considering the nonlinear dynamics of event development, this paper addresses the short-term effects of the previous exclusive examination of digital payments, providing a theoretical basis for future research on the relationship between digital payments and development resilience. The results show the following: (1) digital payments can significantly enhance rural household development resilience; (2) relaxing liquidity constraints and promoting farmer-oriented market participation are the primary mechanisms by which digital payments affect rural household development resilience, but digital payments do not have an impact on rural household development resilience by releasing credit constraints; and (3) the heterogeneity regression analysis showed that the promotion effect of digital payments on rural household development resilience is the strongest in the Western areas, at medium level in the Central areas, and the weakest in the Eastern areas. Thus, the influence of digital payments is not significant to rural household development resilience. Based on the conclusions mentioned above, this article proposes countermeasures and suggestions.