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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1411866
This article is part of the Research Topic Green Finance & Carbon Neutrality: Strategies and Policies for a Sustainable Future View all 32 articles

Byte-Sized Finance, Bushel-Sized Benefits: Unraveling Digital Financial Inclusion Impact on China's Agricultural Green Development

Provisionally accepted
  • School of Economics, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    China's rural financial landscape has long been characterized by exclusion, leaving countless farmers without access to essential financial services. However, the advent of digital financial inclusion presents a promising solution, offering low-cost, high-penetration avenues to bolster agricultural sustainability. This paper unravels how "Byte-Sized Finance" can yield "Bushel-Sized Benefits" in China's agricultural green development. Methodologically, we pioneer a novel system to gauge agricultural green development across 31 Chinese provinces spanning from 2013 to 2021.Empirically, employing fixed-effect, mediation effect, and spatial Durbin models, our study reveals the intricate pathways through which digital financial inclusion influences agricultural green development. We find that it exerts its impact through the lenses of industrial structure and entrepreneurship, operating at both macro and micro levels. Furthermore, our analysis uncovers spatial spillover effects, shedding light on the differential roles played by these mechanisms across regions. This groundbreaking discovery underscores the transformative potential of leveraging digital financial inclusion to propel China toward agricultural green development. By shedding light on these crucial dynamics, our findings offer insights for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners striving to foster sustainability within China's agricultural sector. * t statistics in parentheses;*p<0.1, **p<0.05, ***p<0.01Table 10. Instrumental variables regression. * t statistics in parentheses;*p<0.1, **p<0.05, ***p<0.01

    Keywords: Digital financial inclusion, Agricultural green development, Spatial spillovers, sustainable development, Green Agriculture

    Received: 03 Apr 2024; Accepted: 30 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zhang, Qi and Deng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Xin Deng, School of Economics, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, China

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