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| The Effect of Mobile Payment on the Household Savings Rate in China |
| YIN Zhichao, WU Zishuo, JIANG Jialing
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School of Finance, Capital University of Economics and Business;
School of Management, Beijing Union University |
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Abstract China's economy has made great progress in recent years, and Chinese citizens' average income and wealth have greatly increased. The attendant problem of high savings has attracted the attention of policy makers and scholars. As the main form of digital finance, mobile payment has exerted a profound influence on household financial behaviors through its convenience, rich financial functions, and diverse consumption scenarios, and it has thus promoted the growth of China's economy. In this context, it is useful to study the impact of mobile payment on the Chinese household savings rate.
This paper is structured as follows. The first part describes the importance and marginal contribution of the research topic. The second part reviews the literature on mobile payment and the household savings rate and puts forward the research hypotheses. The third part introduces the data, variables, and model specification. The fourth part presents the analysis of the benchmark results and robustness tests. The fifth part discusses the mechanism. The sixth part further analyzes the channels through which mobile payment plays a role. The seventh part presents the heterogeneity analysis. The eighth part presents the conclusions and policy suggestions.
This paper uses data from two rounds of the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) in 2017 and 2019 and empirically studies the impact of mobile payment on the household savings rate in China using a two-way fixed effect model. To overcome the endogeneity problems caused by omitted variables and measurement errors, this paper uses the proportion of other households in the same community that use mobile payment as an instrumental variable for estimation.
We find that under the two definitions, the use of mobile payment reduces the household savings rate by 18.95% and 15.86%, respectively, and the main ways in which mobile payment reduces the household savings rate are by easing liquidity and credit constraints and expanding social networks. In addition, mobile payment can significantly reduce the precautionary savings that households make to deal with uncertainties such as health risks, medical risks, unemployment risks, and income risks. Regional heterogeneity analysis shows that mobile payment has a greater impact on western China, fourth-and fifth-tier cities, and rural areas. The heterogeneity analysis of family characteristics shows that mobile payment has a stronger effect on agricultural households, middle-and low-income families, and families with a low education level. These findings also reflect the inclusive benefit of mobile payment.
Based on this research conclusion, we make three policy suggestions. First, China should strengthen its policy support to provide digital technical guidance and training for vulnerable groups, improve the market access mechanism, strengthen users' trust in digital platforms, and expand the use of mobile payment from the demand side. Second, China should invest in science and technology infrastructure in underdeveloped regions and expand the popularity of mobile payment from the supply side. Third, China should encourage mobile payment platforms to innovate financial products and services and constantly improve their online health services and information interaction functions to ease household liquidity constraints and reduce background risks.
Overall, this paper makes the following contributions. First, we systematically study the impact of mobile payment on the Chinese household savings rate at the micro household level, expanding the research on the “high savings puzzle”. Second, from the broad liquidity constraints,narrow liquidity constraints and precautionary savings,we discusses the channels of the mobile paymentfunction. We also use a social network analysis of the mobile payment function, providing evidence for the social interaction of mobile payment. Finally, we explore the regional and household characteristic heterogeneity of the influence of mobile payment on the household savings rate and show that mobile payment plays an inclusive role.
In the future, data at the county level can be used to examine the impact of mobile payment on the household savings rate from a macro perspective. It would also be of practical significance to study the impact of mobile payment on China's economy using an empirical methodology.
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Received: 17 September 2021
Published: 12 October 2022
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