The impact of the Internet on household consumption expenditure: an empirical study based on China Family Panel Studies data

Abstract

This article empirically analyzes the impact of Internet usage on household consumption expenditure based on the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data for three periods 2014, 2016, and 2018. The results show that Internet use significantly increases household consumption. This boost persists after adding a series of control variables, accounting for differences in time and region, or changing the measurement of the main explanatory variables. After introducing instrumental variables to overcome potential endogeneity problems and further including the Internet use of the financial decision maker’s spouse for a series of robustness tests, the findings remain robust. The positive boost is even more significant. Finally, heterogeneity analysis is conducted for different consumption types, urban and rural areas, gender of financial decision-makers, and use of other Internet tools.

Keywords:

• Internet
• household consumption expenditure
• Chinese household tracking survey

JEL CODES:

• D12
• D18
• D80

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The submitted article appears all data, models, and code generated or used during the study.

Ethical statement

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any authors. I certify that this manuscript is original and has not been published, and will not be submitted elsewhere for publication. And the study is not split up into several parts to increase the number of submissions and submitted to various journals or one journal over time.

Additional information

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC): ‘Study on the optimization model of overseas warehouse logistics system for cross-border E-commerce of fashion products’ (72072154); Jiangsu Provincial Social Science Applied Research Excellence Project: ‘Research on the Function Positioning of Market Subjects in the Process of “Three Industries Integration” of Jiangsu Agriculture’ (22SYA-001).