The Effects of Digital Finance Use on Rural Households’ Entrepreneurial Choices—From the Perspective of Capital Endowment

From the perspective of capital endowment, this study adopts three rounds of panel data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) covering 2015, 2017, and 2019, and employs the staggered difference-in-differences model (Staggered DID) to examine the impact of digital finance use on rural households’ entrepreneurial decisions. Propensity Score Matching combined with Difference-in-Differences (PSM-DID) and the instrumental variable (IV) approach are utilized to address endogeneity concerns. The empirical results reveal that the adoption of digital finance significantly raises the likelihood of entrepreneurship among rural households. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that digital lending exerts the strongest promotional effect, and digital finance imposes a far more pronounced influence on non-agricultural and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship than on agricultural and survival-driven entrepreneurship. In terms of impact mechanisms, digital finance indirectly boosts rural households’ entrepreneurial probability by accumulating social capital, improving human capital, and fostering psychological capital. Accordingly, to advance the high-quality development of rural entrepreneurship, it is essential to design credit products compatible with agricultural production cycles, optimize digital financial services, and activate multi-dimensional capital endowments, so as to systematically stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship vitality in rural areas.