Does Digital Inclusive Finance Promote Commercial Insurance Participation? -- An Empirical Study Based on the Digital Inclusive Finance Index and China Family Panel Studies Data

This paper matches the "Peking University Digital Inclusive Finance Index" published by Peking University Digital Finance Research Center with the 2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) database, and uses Probit and Logit models to empirically investigate the impact of digital inclusive finance on impact of household commercial insurance participation. The findings show that, first, the development of digital inclusive finance significantly increases commercial insurance participation, and this effect remains significant after adding control variables or changing models; second, the impact of digital inclusive finance on commercial insurance participation shows structural differences by urban-rural, regional, and risk preferences. At the urban-rural level, the impact of digital inclusive finance on commercial insurance participation is significantly higher in rural than in urban areas; at the regional level, the impact of digital inclusive finance is greater in western regions than in eastern and central regions; at the risk preference level, the impact of digital inclusive finance on commercial insurance participation is higher in risk-averse groups than in risk-averse groups. Based on the above findings, this paper proposes to accelerate the development of digital inclusive finance, especially focusing on the construction of digital inclusive finance in less developed regions; improve the financial market system, strengthen the supervision of insurance products; and increase the popularization of financial knowledge.