Jia Kaiwei, He Ying, Mohsin Mohammad
School of Business Administration, Liaoning Technical University, Huludao, China.
School of Business Administration, Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, Liaoning, China.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 30;13:1104120. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1104120. eCollection 2022.
The rapid development of digital finance resulted in fierce competition in the banking industry. The study used Bank-corporate credit data to measure interbank competition based on social network model, and we transformed the regional digital finance index into bank-level digital finance index using each bank's registry and license information. Furthermore, we employed QAP (quadratic assignment procedure) to empirically test the effects of digital finance on the competitive structure among banks. Based on which, we verified its heterogeneity and investigated the mechanisms through which the digital finance affected the banking competition structure. The study finds that, digital finance reshapes the banking competition structure, and intensifies the inter-bank involution while increasing the evolution. The large nation-owned banks have been in central position in the banking network system, with stronger competitiveness and higher strength of digital finance development. For large banks, digital financial development has no significant impact on inter-bank co-opetition and is only more significantly correlated with banking weighted competitive networks. For small and medium-sized banks, digital finance has a significant impact on both co-opetition and competitive pressure. Meanwhile, digital finance also led to the increasing homogeneous competition. In addition, compared with large nation-owned banks, the competitiveness of small and medium-sized joint-equity commercial banks and urban commercial banks are more vulnerable to digital finance and resulting in homogenization problems. Mechanism analysis showed that (1) digital finance promotes the overall competitiveness of the banking industry by improving the inclusiveness of financial services, which expands the service scope (scale effect); (2) digital finance promotes the competition by improving the pricing ability, risk identification ability and finally the capital allocation ability of banks (Pricing effect). The above findings provide new ideas for the governance of banking competition and the realization of a new pattern of economic development.
数字金融的快速发展导致银行业竞争激烈。该研究使用银行-企业信贷数据，基于社会网络模型衡量银行间竞争，并利用各银行的注册和许可信息将区域数字金融指数转化为银行层面的数字金融指数。此外，我们采用二次指派程序（QAP）实证检验数字金融对银行间竞争结构的影响。在此基础上，我们验证了其异质性，并研究了数字金融影响银行竞争结构的机制。研究发现，数字金融重塑了银行竞争结构，在加剧银行间内卷化的同时也增加了演化。大型国有银行在银行网络体系中处于中心地位，竞争力更强，数字金融发展实力更高。对于大型银行而言，数字金融发展对银行间竞合没有显著影响，仅与银行加权竞争网络的相关性更为显著。对于中小型银行，数字金融对竞合和竞争压力均有显著影响。同时，数字金融也导致同质化竞争加剧。此外，与大型国有银行相比，中小型股份制商业银行和城市商业银行的竞争力更容易受到数字金融的影响，进而导致同质化问题。机制分析表明：（1）数字金融通过提高金融服务的包容性来提升银行业的整体竞争力，从而扩大服务范围（规模效应）；（2）数字金融通过提高银行的定价能力、风险识别能力以及最终的资本配置能力来促进竞争（定价效应）。上述研究结果为银行竞争治理和实现经济发展新格局提供了新思路。
