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| Digital Financial Inclusion and Resilience to Unanticipated Shocks: Theory and Evidence |
| LI Zheng, LI Xin
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| Institute of Finance and Development, Nankai University |
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Abstract A stable financial inclusion system can improve a household's resilience to risk and the financial health of consumers. Digital finance is developing rapidly in China, and thus, the importance of promoting a healthy and sustainable system of digital financial inclusion is recognized. However, the issue of consumer financial health has not been fully considered in the literature. Digital finance development can encounter problems such as platform cross-credit granting and individual over-lending. We therefore investigate how digital financial inclusion can reduce households' unanticipated risks from the perspective of financial health and how it can effectively develop in China.
We first develop a theoretical model to examine how digital financial inclusion affects unexpected risk shocks. We then conduct an empirical investigation in the Chinese context using the Global Findex Database for 2014 and 2017. We find that first, digital financial inclusion can effectively enhance households' resilience to risk shocks. All groups can enjoy the dividends of digital financial development, but the less-well-off gain the most benefit. Second, we find that moderate borrowing can increase households' risk-taking, while excessive borrowing will lead to higher risk-taking, thereby reducing the available contingency when facing risk. This indicates that residents' ability to cope with risk is based on rational borrowing. We obtain data from the China Household Finance Survey and China Family Panel Studies and confirm our findings. Third, digital financial inclusion can improve households' ability to respond to risk through four channels: promoting transfer and remittance, increasing trust levels, increasing the frequency of deposits and withdrawals, and reducing transaction costs. Finally, digital financial inclusion can help households affected by the risks of steady consumption, mainly through the promotion of spending on non-durable goods.
This study provides several important policy implications. First, the development of digital financial inclusion can help households participate in the financial market and provide them with safe savings channels, and market regulators can also better manage sudden risks. China should therefore accelerate digital technology innovation and aim to fully implement digital financial inclusion. Second, borrowing behavior in the development of digital financial inclusion may become excessive, so any financial inclusion system should focus on the following. (1) Improving the financial literacy of consumers. Policymakers should conduct online financial education, ensure the protection of financial consumers' rights and interests and improve households' financial prevention capabilities. (2) The supervision mechanism of digital financial platforms should be improved by the government, which can promote innovative management and control technology. (3) The effective sharing of big data between financial technology platforms can prevent consumers' overborrowing and excessive debt.
The main contributions of this paper are as follows. First, based on our theoretical and empirical research, we reveal the impact of digital financial inclusion on the response to unexpected risk and its mechanism. Research has mainly focused on the relationship between digital financial inclusion and the demand for credit, consumption, entrepreneurial innovation, inequality, and inclusive growth. Few studies have fully considered the impact of digital financial inclusion on households' risk response. Our study therefore extends the literature in this direction. Second, we explore the consequences of multiple lending behaviors from a financial health perspective. Our empirical results show that excessive borrowing can weaken the risk-smoothing effect of digital financial inclusion. A high-quality financial inclusion system should involve consumers' financial health, and so our findings provide a new research perspective and useful policy references for the development of such a system. Third, we present micro-evidence that digital financial inclusion can help households suffering from negative shocks by stabilizing their consumption, thus providing new insights into how steady consumption can be attained through financial inclusion.
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Published: 02 July 2022
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