E-commerce and Rural Household Debt Expansion: --A Quasi-Natural Experiment from a National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Policy in Rural Areas

In recent years, the risk of rural household debt has risen rapidly, and the development and diffusion of e-commerce in rural areas has the tendency to promote the expansion of household debt. Using the sample data of the China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) from 2014 to 2020,and taking the "Comprehensive Demonstration of E-commerce in Rural Areas" project as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper analyzes the impact and mechanism of e-commerce on rural household debt by using the staggered DID model. The results show that e-commerce significantly increases the debt size and risk of rural households. Mechanism analysis shows that e-commerce mainly alleviates the financial exclusion problem, stimulates household consumption-based expenditure and agricultural production, and thus promotes household consumption and borrowing debt. Based on this, it is important to pay attention to the debt risk of low-income newly indebted households in rural areas, to strengthening the upgrading of the consumption structure in rural areas, raising the standard of living of the rural population. This paper provides a new perspective for understanding the indebtedness of rural residents and identifying the impact of e-commerce and the digital economy on rural debt, which is of some significance for further improving the development of e-commerce in rural areas.