Examining the impact of digital financial inclusion on economic development in urban and rural areas of China using remote sensing

Abstract

AbstractThe expansion and penetration of digital financial inclusion have provided new impetus to economic development. With the aim of investigating the non-spatial and spatial effects of digital financial inclusion on urban and rural economic development, we target 31 provinces from 2011 to 2019 and complement the research gap by processing luminosity-corrected GDP and land cover images to generate urban and rural GDP statistics. This study highlights the following conclusions: first, digital financial inclusion has positively localized effects on rural economic development. Additionally, the spatial spillover effect of digital financial inclusion in rural regions is more profound than that of traditional finance. Last, digital financial inclusion has spatial spillover effects in narrowing urban-rural inequality that traditional finance lacks. Overall, our research provides new insights into the role of digital financial inclusion in urban and rural areas.