Promoting or Inhibiting? Digital Inclusive Finance and Cultural Consumption of Rural Residents

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper contributes to a literature on the role of fintech in helping underserved and unbanked individuals.  There are some prior papers on topic with data from different countries (typically emerging markets).  A good survey to reference on point is Allen, Franklin, Xian Gu, & Julapa Jagtiani, 2021. "A Survey of Fintech Research and Policy Discussion" Review of Corporate Finance 1 (3-4), 259-339. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/114.00000007.

My main concerns here are twofold.  First, the hypotheses do not seem overly innovative or novel.  It is pretty much as I would expect based on prior work. I wonder if you might have some additional economics or intuition to build into your discussion to indicate something that is not quite so straightforward?  And perhaps discuss some prior work here more?  Are there any institutional features that you can discuss in your empirical context?

Second, it would help if you interpreted the size of your coefficient estimates more.  Perhaps you could say something like "a 1-standard deviation increase in the right-hand-side variable causes an x% change in the left-hand-side variable" or something similar?

I hope these comments are helpful

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper investigates the impact mechanism of digital inclusive finance on the cultural consumption of rural residents in China and finds a significant positive effect. Thank you for the opportunity to read the paper and provide my comments on improving this research piece. I hope the authors find the comments helpful.

 

1. I would suggest better motivating the research question. This paper has its potential but fails to highlight the research gap to which you contribute. It’s a good idea to map digital finance and consumption. The authors may want to present a comprehensive review of the literature. On the one hand, there is an array of literature related to digital finance and consumption (e.g., Li et al., 2020). It’s meaningful to understand the negative consequences of digital finance (e.g., Yue et al., 2022). On the other hand, I would suggest to enriched with the latest studies on cultural consumption. The authors may want to highlight the research gaps by comparing them with the critical literature.

 

 

[Refs:

1.     Li, J., Wu, Y., & Xiao, J. J. (2020). The impact of digital finance on household consumption: Evidence from China. Economic Modelling, 86, 317-326.

2.     Yue, P., Korkmaz, A. G., Yin, Z., & Zhou, H. (2022). The rise of digital finance: Financial inclusion or debt trap?. Finance Research Letters, 47, 102604.]

 

2. For the methodology, the mediation effect model has been widely criticized for its application in Economics, finance, and management since it is hard to claim the complete exogeneity of the interest variables. I would suggest removing the mediation effect models

 

3. What is the economic significance of the results found?

 

4. Conclusion would benefit a lot from the theoretical discussion.

 

5. Practical implications of the paper should be improved.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for responding to my prior comments.