Unintended consequences: How does digital inclusive finance affect migrants' urban settlement intentions?

Existing studies focus more on the benefits of digital inclusive finance in promoting employment, raising people's income, and boosting consumption, but have relatively ignore the widespread existence of the digital divide between urban and rural areas and among different groups in China and the unintended consequences it produces. This study first adds learning costs to the traditional population migration theoretical framework, confirming that the impact of digital inclusive finance on the urban settlement intention of the migrants has an inverted U-shape, as the level of digital inclusion financial development increases, the intentions of the migrants to settle down first rises and then falls. Empirical results support this finding. A further investigation shows that the economic dividends and learning cost associated with digital inclusive finance underpins such an inverted-U relationship. Moreover, individual endowment is an important factor affecting learning cost. The negative effect of digital inclusive finance on urban settlement intention is more obvious for rural migrants with relatively inferior endowment. Finally, we also find that education can mitigate this negative effect by reducing the related learning costs. This study provides strong evidence that in the rapid development of digital inclusive finance, migrants, especially those with insufficient endowments face greater migration costs.