FinTech adoption and rural economic development: Evidence from China

Yulong Cai, Zhuo Huang and Xun Zhang

Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 2024, vol. 83, issue C

Abstract: In the context of China's rural economic landscape, the emergence of Financial Technology (FinTech) has induced transformative economic impact. This study utilizes a composite county-level FinTech index and data from China's National Fixed Point Survey (NFS) to analyze the impact of FinTech adoption on rural economic development. The empirical findings outline a positive correlation between FinTech adoption and enhancement in rural household earnings, especially on wage and property incomes, thus narrowing urban-rural income gap. For wage income, we find that FinTech has provided new non-agricultural employment opportunities to rural households, especially in service sectors closely related to FinTech. For property income, the development of FinTech has provided effective financial services and supported the operations of rural enterprises, thereby increasing dividend payments to rural households who contribute their unused arable land to these enterprises due to labor transformation from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors. This research extends the existing studies of FinTech literature by illustrating its role in fostering rural economic growth within the Asia-Pacific emerging markets.

Keywords: FinTech adoption; Rural economic development; Household income; Employment-related income; Land-related income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 E24 R51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927538X24000155
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:83:y:2024:i:c:s0927538x24000155

DOI: 10.1016/j.pacfin.2024.102264

Access Statistics for this article

Pacific-Basin Finance Journal is currently edited by K. Chan and S. Ghon Rhee

More articles in Pacific-Basin Finance Journal from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().