互联网普及如何影响中国家庭债务杠杆率

互联网技术的普及推动了数字金融、移动支付、金融科技等一系列金融创新的发展，基于此，文章利用中国家庭金融调查（CHFS）2017年的数据，细致探讨了互联网这一最基础的技术普及与家庭债务杠杆率的关系及内在作用机理。结果发现：（1）互联网的使用将显著推高家庭的债务杠杆率。在使用工具变量回归、处理效应模型与PSM匹配纠正内生性问题后，这一结论依然成立。（2）除通过促进电子支付、增加金融可及性外，互联网的使用还将通过提高信息搜寻与增强社会互动这两种渠道而带来家庭债务杠杆率的累积。（3）互联网的使用与家庭债务杠杆率间存在显著的非线性关系，即意味着只有当对互联网的使用达到一定程度后，其才会带来家庭债务风险。（4）对于受需求型信贷约束、低收入与中老年群体，互联网使用对这类群体债务杠杆率的影响程度更大。进一步地，除网络平台借款将推高家庭债务杠杆外，文章还考察了互联网的使用对民间借贷的影响，并发现其对家庭非正规借贷杠杆率的影响更为突出。而对于金融知识欠缺的家庭，其债务杠杆率更高。这说明，在鼓励使用互联网推动家庭参与金融市场的同时，也要注意防范过度使用互联网所带来的金融风险，而其中一种有效的途径便是普及金融知识教育，提高居民的金融素养。

How Does Internet Affect Household Leverage?

The Internet technology has initiated a series of financial innovations such as digital finance, mobile payment, and Fintech. Applying the data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) in 2017, this article carefully explores the relationship between internet access and household debt leverage and the internal mechanism. The results show that:(1) The internet will significantly aggravate household debt leverage. This conclusion is still valid after using instrumental variable regression, treatment effects model and PSM to correct the endogenity. (2) The internet will accumulate household debt leverage mainly through four channels:promoting electronic payments, increasing credit availability, improving information search, and enhancing social interaction. (3) For families who are subject to demand-side credit constraint, low-income, low-educated, and urban low-income households, internet will produce a greater impact on the debt leverage for these groups. Further research find that the internet will mainly increases the leverage of household informal borrowing. (4) There is a significant non-linear relationship between the internet and the household debt leverage, which means that only when the usage of the Internet reaches a certain level, it will increase the household debt risk. Furthermore, except that Internet lending will push up household leverage, this article also examines the impact of Internet on folk debit and finds that it produces a prominent influence on household informal leverage. For families with poor financial knowledge, their debt leverage is higher. This shows that while the internet can promote household participation in the financial market, we must also pay attention to prevent the financial risks caused by excessive usage of the Internet. One of the effective ways is to popularize financial education and improve the financial literacy of residents.