Household Smartphone Use and Consumption: Evidence from the China Household Finance Survey
DOI: https://doi.org/10.62381/E264705
Author(s)
He Zou1, Yijie Peng1,*, Siran Wang2, Xuanming Wang1
Affiliation(s)
1Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing, China
2Department of Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
*Corresponding Author
Abstract
Smartphones allow households to search for products and complete payments on the same device. This study examines how household smartphone use relates to consumption when it is measured separately from the digital behaviors it enables. We analyze 28,325 households from the 2017 China Household Finance Survey. The preferred specification includes household demographic and economic controls, province fixed effects, and county-clustered standard errors. Household smartphone use is positively associated with household consumption, and the association remains robust across alternative specifications and a matched 2015–2017 sample. Smartphone use is also positively associated with mobile-payment adoption and gift expenditure, which remain positively associated with consumption when included jointly with smartphone use. These findings are consistent with both transaction and social-relation channels. The association is stronger among lower-income households but similar across urban and rural households. This study distinguishes household smartphone use from downstream payment and social behaviors, providing a clearer understanding of how household-level digital participation relates to consumption. The findings represent conditional associations rather than causal effects.
Keywords
Household Smartphone Use; Mobile Internet Access; Household Consumption; Mobile Payment; Gift Expenditure; China Household Finance Survey
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