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Scan the QR Code of Happiness: Can Mobile Payment Adoption Make People Happier?

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Abstract

This research note investigates the association between mobile payment adoption and happiness. We employ the conditional mixed process model to address the selection bias and estimate the open-access 2017 Chinese General Social Survey data. Our findings reveal that mobile payment adoption significantly improves rural residents’ happiness but does not significantly influence urban residents’ happiness. Exploring gendered differences finds that regardless of urban or rural residence, females are happier than males when adopting mobile payment. Our findings suggest that promoting mobile payment adoption could bring favourable well-being returns.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. The detailed data description is provided on the website: http://cgss.ruc.edu.cn/.

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Acknowledgments

Hongyun Zheng acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (NSFC No. 71873050).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the leading author, Hongyun Zheng, upon reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Hongyun Zheng

  2. Department of Global Value Chains and Trade, Faculty of Agribusiness and Commerce, Lincoln University, PO Box 85084, Christchurch, Lincoln, 7647, New Zealand

    Wanglin Ma

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  1. Hongyun Zheng
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  2. Wanglin Ma
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Correspondence to Wanglin Ma.

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Zheng, H., Ma, W. Scan the QR Code of Happiness: Can Mobile Payment Adoption Make People Happier?. Applied Research Quality Life 17, 2299–2310 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-022-10036-0

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