Role of Digital Inclusive Finance for High-Quality Business Development: A Study of China’s “Five Development Concept” Policy

Abstract

The “Five Development Concept” policy is the foundation of high-quality development in China, and enterprises should base their high-quality development on this new paradigm. Can digital inclusive finance play a vital role in the high-quality growth of those businesses? This paper examines the relationship between digital inclusive finance and high-quality corporate development and its mechanism of action. This study demonstrates that digital financial inclusion can facilitate high-quality business development. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the contribution of digital inclusion to high-quality businesses development is more evident among non-state, large growth capacity and small-scale enterprises. An investigation of the mechanism reveals three pathways through which high-quality enterprise development is facilitated via digital inclusive finance, namely improving innovation, easing financing constraints, and improving risk taking, and a triple internal drive mechanism of innovation, capital, and risk is extant. This paper enhances the research related to the micro-level of digital inclusive finance on the high-quality development of enterprises, which is conducive to the construction of a long-term mechanism of digital inclusive finance under the new development pattern, so as to effectively facilitate the high-quality development of enterprises in developing countries.