How fintech adoption is affecting the size of rural bank lending?

In the context of the digital economy, the enabling role of fintech for commercial banks deserves in-depth study. Based on unbalanced panel data of 174 rural banks from 2016 to 2020, this study uses Python technique to measure the fintech adoption index of rural banks and uses ordinary least squares (OLS) and stepwise regression to test the impact of fintech adoption on loan size of rural banks and the mechanism of its effect. The study shows that the impact of fintech applications on loan size of rural banks shows an inverted U-shaped trend of rising and then falling. The mechanism analysis finds that risk-taking plays a nonlinear mediating role between fintech adoption and rural bank loan size.