Geographical Distance, Digital Transformation of Banks and the Scale of Farmers' Credit Supply in Financial Institutions——Evidence from F Province's Rural Credit Cooperatives

Financial institutions of peasant household credit supply scale can affect farmer credit availability, which affect the rural revitalization of strategic implementation and the realization of common prosperity. In order to study the impact of distance and bank digitalization level on the credit supply of financial institutions to rural households, this paper uses the mixed cross-sectional data of more than 800, 000 samples from 67 rural credit cooperatives (rural commercial banks) in F province's rural credit system from 2018 to 2020. The results show that the distance between rural households and rural cooperative outlets has a negative impact on the credit supply of financial institutions to them, but the higher the digitalization level of banks, the smaller the inhibition of distance on the credit supply. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that the digital transformation of financial institutions in alleviating the geographical distance of peasant household credit supply scale inhibition by farmers digital financial literacy, regional banking competition degree and degree of commercial bank. Further analysis found that the digital transformation of banks has a greater mitigation effect on farmers' credit loans, medium and long term loans and loans invested in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry or fishery. In this regard, this paper proposes to actively guide and standardize the digital transformation of banks, attach importance to training and improving farmers' digital financial literacy, and appropriately promote the commercialization of rural banks.