Smartphone Use and Financial Participation Behavior of Relatively Poor Households
Inadequate financial accessibility makes it difficult for relatively poor households to access development opportunities,and this paper explores the role of smartphone use in the financial participation of relatively poor households.By analyzing data from the China Household Finance Survey 2021,this paper finds that relatively poor households using smartphones have a higher proba-bility of participating in the formal financial market and ahigher proportion of financial asset allocation,while their probability of participating in the informal financial market decreases,and the conclusions still hold after considering endogeneity issues and con-ducting a series of robustness tests.Channel analysis shows that smartphone use increases formal financial market participation among relatively poor households through increased household social interactions,formal financial access,and financial literacy.Het-erogeneity analysis shows that the effect of smartphones in promoting formal financial market participation is closely related to the de-gree of regional information infrastructure development.Further analysis results show that smartphones mainly rely on the mobile In-ternet to have an effect on the financial behavior of relatively poor households.Accordingly,this paper makes recommendations to ac-celerate financial innovation and mobile Internet information infrastructure construction to realize the positive role of formal financial markets in alleviating relative poverty.
万方数据
维普
