Evaluation of the Development of Fintech-Served Real Economy Based on Fintech Improvement

The new generation of information technology (IT) promotes the integration of fintech with the real economy. Existing studies emphasize the relationship between fintech and the real economy over the development level of fintech-served real economy (FtRE). To fill up the gap, this paper explores the evaluation of FtRE based on fintech improvement (FtI). Firstly, an evaluation index system (EIS) was established for fintech service efficiency (FtSE), and FtSE was measured through data envelopment analysis (DEA). Then, fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering was performed to discretize continuous indices. Drawing on matter-element theories, the authors created the classic domain and node domain of FtRE, as well as the evaluation objects of real economy, calculated the correlation between each factor affecting development level and evaluated development level, and computed the weight coefficient of each index. Finally, the influence of FtI-based FtRE development was empirically analyzed through experiments.