The Impact of Digital Inclusive Finance on High-Quality Urban–Rural Integrated Development—Based on Panel Data of 30 Provinces (Autonomous Regions, Municipalities) in China

As a core driver of high-quality urban–rural integration, digital inclusive finance plays a key role in the process of Chinese-style modernization. After measuring the level of high-quality urban–rural integration development using the TOPSIS entropy method, this study employs fixed-effects models and mediation models to empirically examine how digital inclusive finance influences high-quality urban–rural integration development over the period from 2012 to 2022. The main findings are as follows: (1) Digital inclusive finance has a significantly positive promoting effect on high-quality urban–rural integration. (2) The enabling effect of digital inclusive finance exhibits significant regional heterogeneity, following a gradient pattern of “strongest in the Eastern region, followed by the Central region, and weakest in the Western region.” (3) In terms of dimensional effects, the breadth of coverage contributes the most, followed by the depth of use, while the degree of digitalization has the smallest impact. (4) The mediation mechanism indicates that factor mobility indirectly promotes high-quality urban–rural integration. Based on the above findings, this paper proposes policy recommendations to foster high-quality urban–rural integration development in China.