The Digital Economy,Social Trust,and the Large National Unified Market
Accelerating the development of the digital economy,promoting the social credit system and building the large national unified market are important practical issues mentioned in the report of the 20th Party Congress.Based on the balanced panel data of China Family Tracking Survey(CF-PS)of 2018 and 2020,the paths and key difficulties to improve the large national unified market are identified.The results show that digital economic development has led to fundamental social changes.It is also found that the digital economy can significantly improve the social trust of subjects and help to improve the social credit system when introducing digital trust into the social trust spectrum.The heterogeneity test shows that the digital econo-my has a more obvious effect on promoting the social trust of digital immigrants,females,and individuals who are not provided with family care serv-ices.The gap between individual and family resource endowment can lead to the unfavorable effect of digital divide.In addition,the relationship be-tween the digital economy and social trust is also affected by peer effects and external environmental shocks.The mechanism analysis shows that the dig-ital economy can expand and enrich the digital survivability of individuals from the perspectives of urban-rural integration(macroscopic)and personality traits(microscopic),and optimize the social trust of individuals.Further analysis shows that the digital economy can strengthen social interaction and exchange through social trust,further break down local protection and market segmentation,and promote the construction of a unifed domestic market.The policy implication of this study is that the formal system should be combined with the informal system of social trust in the successive deployment of digital economy application scenarios,which can help accelerate the construction of the large national unified market.The policy recommendation of this study is that the digital society should also follow the equality connotation of people-orientation,and integrate social trust into the two levels of digit-al technology application and data factor flow,so as to enrich the practical path of the construction of the large national unified market.
digital economydigital trustsocial trustnetwork gaminglarge national unified market