Abstract: Financial market participation is the core issue in the field of household finance. Based on CFPS2018 data, this paper empirically studies the impact of Internet use on household financial market participation. The study finds that the use of Internet channels can not only significantly improve the participation probability and investment scale of the financial market, but also have a significant positive impact on the allocation rate of household financial assets. After the instrumental variable method was used to alleviate endogenicity problems and the birobust IPWRA model and PSM model with corrected sample self-selection bias were used for robustness tests, the core research conclusions remained significant. The heterogeneity study found that the positive influence was more obvious in the farmers in the regions with high income, low housing price and developed e-commerce. The analysis of function channels shows that the use of the Internet can indirectly drive the financial investment of households by increasing factor input, broadening information channels, expanding social groups and enhancing social trust. It is of great practical significance for accelerating the digital rural strategy to further explore the role of Internet use in promoting the financial investment of rural households.

Key words: Internet Use, Rural Finance, Household Financial Investment, the Rural Revitalization Strategy, Financial Asset Allocation Efficiency