The Impact of the Development of Digital Finance on the Financing Efficiency of SMEs

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-475-4_128How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Financing efficiency; digital finance index; SME financing; DEA-Malmquist model; mediation effect analysis; regional heterogeneity

Abstract

This study focuses on the issue of improving the financing efficiency of small and medium-sized enterprises under the background of digital finance. In view of the problems of poor financing and inefficient resource allocation in the traditional financial system, this study proposes to use the level of digital financial development as a starting point to evaluate its impact path and mechanism on enterprise financing efficiency. Based on the panel data of 4,800 small and medium-sized enterprises in 22 provinces in China from 2015 to 2022, an empirical analysis framework including DEA-Malmquist efficiency measurement and fixed effect model is constructed, and financing availability is introduced as a mediating variable to identify its indirect impact effect. The experimental results show that the level of digital financial development is significantly positively correlated with the financing efficiency of small and medium-sized enterprises, and financing availability plays a partial mediating role in it, explaining about 30% of the total effect. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that the impact is more significant in the eastern region and technology-intensive enterprises. The research conclusions not only verify the positive role of digital finance in optimizing the financing structure of small and medium-sized enterprises, but also provide a theoretical basis and practical reference for the design of regional digital financial policies and the optimization of financial services for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jingyu Rao
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/11
TI  - The Impact of the Development of Digital Finance on the Financing Efficiency of SMEs
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 10th International Conference on Modern Management, Education and Social Sciences (MMET 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1163
EP  - 1170
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-475-4_128
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-475-4_128
ID  - Rao2025
ER  -