Unintended consequences: How does digital inclusive finance affect migrants’urban settlement intentions?
Abstract: Existing studies focus more on the benefits of digital inclusive finance in promoting employment, raising people's income, and boosting consumption, but have relatively ignore the widespread existence of the digital divide between urban and rural areas and among different groups in China and the unintended consequences it produces. This study first adds learning costs to the traditional population migration theoretical framework, confirming that the impact of digital inclusive finance on the urban settlement intention of the migrants has an inverted U-shape, as the level of digital inclusion financial development increases, the intentions of the migrants to settle down first rises and then falls. Empirical results support this finding. A further investigation shows that the economic dividends and learning cost associated with digital inclusive finance underpins such an inverted-U relationship. Moreover, individual endowment is an important factor affecting learning cost. The negative effect of digital inclusive finance on urban settlement intention is more obvious for rural migrants with relatively inferior endowment. Finally, we also find that education can mitigate this negative effect by reducing the related learning costs. This study provides strong evidence that in the rapid development of digital inclusive finance, migrants, especially those with insufficient endowments face greater migration costs.
Keywords: Digital inclusive finance; Learning costs; Individual endowment differences; Migrants; Urban settlement intentions
摘要：已有研究较多的关注了数字普惠金融发展在促进就业、提高民众收入、提振居民消费等方面的好处，但相对忽视数字鸿沟在我国城乡之间以及不同群体之间的广泛存在及其产生的非意料结果。本文在传统人口迁移理论框架中加入了学习成本这一要素，证实了随着数字普惠金融发展水平的提升，流动人口的城市定居意愿会先上升后下降。并且，个人禀赋是影响学习成本的重要因素，禀赋处于相对劣势地位的农村流动人口，学习成本对其城市定居意愿的负向作用会更为明显。紧接着，本文结合中国数字普惠金融指数、中国流动人口动态监测调查(CMDS)数据以及城市层面相关数据证实了数字普惠金融发展与流动人口的城市定居意愿之间倒U形关系的存在。更重要的是，随着数字普惠金融发展水平的提升，城市流动人口的定居意愿会持续上升，而禀赋处于相对弱势地位的农村流动人口的定居意愿则先上升后下降。最后，研究还发现教育水平的提升会降低禀赋不足的负面影响。本研究为数字普惠金融快速发展的大背景下流动人口特别是流动人口中禀赋不足的群体面临更大的迁移成本提供了有力的证据。
关键词：数字普惠金融，学习成本，个人禀赋差异，流动人口，城市定居意愿
来源：
International Review of Financial Analysis, Volume 89，2023. PP 1-13.
DOI：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2023.102766
