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3132As the main force of financial support for rural revitalization, promoting the development of county rural commercial banks (CRCBs) has important theoretical significance and practical value for furthering the rural revitalization strategy. Digital inclusive financial institutions are accelerating their expansion into the county financial market, and the relationship between CRCBs and digital inclusive financial institutions is also changing. Based on this, the evolutionary game model is used to systematically deduce the three-stage characteristics of the competition, cooperation, and competition-cooperation between CRCBs and digital inclusive financial institutions in this paper. Additionally, the panel fixed-effects model and the DID model are used to test the effects, mechanisms, and heterogeneity characteristics of digital inclusive finance on the development of CRCBs.
The study finds that: First, digital inclusive finance increases the “benefits” to the development of CRCBs, but the effect of increasing the “benefits” is not obvious in the competition-dominated stage, and it is more significant in the cooperation-dominated stage. Second, in the competition-dominated stage, the effect of competition for customer resources on the development of CRCBs is not significant, while that for credit on the development of CRCBs is significant. In addition, CRCBs have benefited from their innovative capacity through their learning ability. Third, digital inclusive finance has stronger “benefits” on the development of reformed CRCBs. Besides, in areas where the provincial Rural Credit Cooperative Union pays more attention to digital inclusive finance and where the level of financial literacy is higher, the effect of “benefits” is significantly higher. Fourth, the competition-cooperation-dominated stage is the future trend. With the gradual elimination of China’s digital divide, digital inclusive financial institutions will eventually evolve into a higher level of cooperation-dominated stage led by them.
The main contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it introduces the learning ability of the game subject to modify the evolutionary game model, reproducing the game process in a real and comprehensive way. Second, it provides evidence to the “benefits” and “misfortunes” of the effect of digital inclusive finance on the development of CRCBs at different stages, providing references for the promotion of the high-quality development of CRCBs. Third, it combines the special characteristics of CRCBs to accurately assess the heterogeneous characteristics of the “benefits” and “misfortunes” of digital inclusive finance on the development of CRCBs, so as to provide more targeted policy references for the promotion of the development of CRCBs.
