The Impact of Central Bank Digital Currency on Rural Revitalization: An Empirical Analysis of Data from 284 Cities in China

As legal tender created using advanced digital technology, Central Bank Digital Currency provides new opportunities for driving rural revitalization. This paper empirically assesses the impact of Central Bank Digital Currency on rural revitalization by conducting a quasi-natural experiment on China’s e-CNY pilot, using multi-temporal double-difference empirical analyses of city-level data from 2011 to 2022. The study found that Central Bank Digital Currency significantly enhances rural revitalization, and this still held after the endogeneity analysis and various robustness tests were conducted; the mechanism analysis showed that Central Bank Digital Currency can promote rural revitalization by upgrading rural residents’ consumption structures, easing rural residents’ financing constraints, and improving rural residents’ environmental management practices; the heterogeneity analysis showed that the impact of Central Bank Digital Currency on rural revitalization was more pronounced in the more complete digital infrastructure areas, regions governed by larger governments, the eastern region generally, areas with higher levels of financial development, and areas that are not old-industrial bases. Based on the findings, targeted policy recommendations are proposed to map out a feasible path to diversifying Central Bank Digital Currency rural applications and optimizing the impact of Central Bank Digital Currency on rural revitalization.