Digital financial development, farmers' digital financial behavior, and relative poverty: An empirical analysis based on data from farmers in Yongzhou City

Abstract

The development of digital finance has provided new, sustainable technological conditions for improving rural households' affluence and living standards in China. This paper conducts field research on 850 rural households in Yongzhou City, using logit models to empirically analyze the sustainable impact of rural households' digital financial behavior. It examines the magnitude of influence from various factors and explores the impact mechanisms and mediating effects of farmers' digital financial behaviors, specifically focusing on digital payments, internet wealth management, and internet credit. The marginal contributions of this study are: (1) First-hand data from rural Yongzhou, providing accurate, reliable, and practical microdata that better reflect local farmers' ability and willingness to engage in digital financial behavior; (2) Practical classification of explanatory variables based on Yongzhou farmers’ conditions, exploring how income, age, and education level affect farmers' use of digital financial services; (3) Constructing a farmer affluence index system incorporating housing conditions, living standards, and access to public services, and analyzing the mediating effect of relative poverty on digital financial behavior. The findings suggest that household income and education level have positive, sustainable impacts on digital financial behavior, while age has a negative correlation. Factors such as ownership of a commercial house or car have no significant impact. Relative poverty shows a weak negative impact on the use of digital payment but has a small, sustained negative effect on the mediating role of internet lending behavior, with no significant impact observed for internet wealth management behavior. The paper concludes with recommendations to optimize farmers' digital financial behavior from the perspectives of individual farmers, financial institutions, and government support.