ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1589814
The Impact of Digital Financial Inclusion on the High-Quality Development of Pastoral Economy in China's Minority Regions
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jilin Agriculture University, Changchun, China
- 2Bohai University, Jinzhou, Liaoning Province, China
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In the pursuit of high-quality development in the pastoral economy, digital financial inclusion (DFI) plays an indispensable role in driving progress. The system of DFI constructed through "digital technology + inclusive finance" has gradually extended various financial services, such as lending and financing, to the pastoral areas of ethnic minorities, significantly reducing the barriers and costs for herdsmen to access financial services.: Based on the panel data of 26 prefecture-level cities in the 9 main pastoral provinces of ethnic minorities in China from 2011 to 2022, this paper employs the entropy weight method to construct a High-Quality Development Index for animal husbandry. Utilizing fixed-effects and mediation-effect models, we analyze and elucidate the pivotal role of DFI in promoting the highquality development of animal husbandry in impoverished regions, with particular emphasis on its underlying mechanisms. Results: (1) DFI has a significant positive effect on the high-quality development of the pastoral economy in China's ethnic minority pastoral areas. Mechanism tests reveal that DFI promotes highquality development in these regions through increased output value and income. (2) Structural heterogeneity analysis reveals that the coverage and usage depth of DFI have a significant positive effect on the high-quality development of the pastoral economy in ethnic minority pastoral areas. (3) Mediation effect tests indicate that DFI can further promote the high-quality development of the pastoral economy through the trickle-down effect of non-agricultural employment and the optimization of the pastoral industry structure. Discussion: This study provides theoretical support and empirical evidence for promoting the high-quality development of the pastoral economy through DFI. It also offers micro-level evidence for alleviating the funding constraints of herdsmen in remote areas without collateral through DFI.
Keywords: Digital financial inclusion, Pastoral economy, High-quality development, fixed-effects model, ethnic minority pastoral areas
Received: 10 Mar 2025; Accepted: 15 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhang, Du, Deng, Cao and Liang. 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:
Jun Wang, Jilin Agriculture University, Changchun, China
Yuan Liang, Bohai University, Jinzhou, 121013, Liaoning Province, China
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