Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine smallholders' preferences and willingness to pay for microcredit products with varying attribute combinations, in order to contribute to the debate on the optimal design of rural microcredit. Design/methodology/approach -Data used in this study are based on a discrete choice experiment from 552 randomly selected respondents. Mixed logit and latent class models are estimated to examine the choice probability and sources of preference heterogeneity. Endogenous attribute attendance models are applied to account for attribute non-attendance (ANA) phenomenon, focusing on separate non-attendance probability as well as joint non-attendance probability.Findings -The results demonstrate that preference heterogeneity and ANA exist in the smallholder farmers' microcredit choices. Averagely, smallholder farmers prefer longer credit period, smaller credit size, lower transaction costs and lower interest rate. Guarantor collateral method and installment repayment positively affect their preferences as well. Moreover, respondents are found to be willing to pay more for the attributes they consider important. The microcredit providers are able to attract new customers under the current interest rates, if the combination of attributes is appropriately adjusted. Originality/value -This study contributes to the debate by assessing the preference trade-off of different microcredit attributes more comprehensively than in previous analyses, by taking preference heterogeneity and ANA into account.

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It is widely accepted that rural microcredit has the potential to contribute to poverty reduction in developing countries. This paper examines the factors that affect rural residents' decisions to participate in different types of microcredit, and how these factors impact on household income and consumption, using cross-sectional data from a survey in China. A multinomial endogenous switching regression model is employed to account for selection bias and treatment effects. The empirical findings indicate that family size, dependency ratio, local casual wage rate, credit information and shocks mainly determine the selection of different credit sources. Furthermore, the estimates reveal that participation in microcredit tends to increase both per capita income and consumption significantly.

This study examined the determinants of financial literacy (FL) and its impact on access to financial services (AFS), using data collected from rural Ghana. A two-stage residual inclusion model is utilized to address the selection bias issue. The results showed that FL is affected by household heads’ age, gender, education, asset ownership, homeownership, and economics education. The results revealed that FL is significant and positively related to AFS, but its square shows an inverse relation with saving mobilization. This indicated a non-linear relationship between FL and AFS. Moreover, we find that FL has a larger AFS impact for households with high-income and male household heads relative to their counterparts. The study recommended that the government can initiate the creation of a rural committee to educate rural residents on financial issues through radio broadcasting and meetings. Our findings highlighted the importance of FL on AFS in enhancing the welfare of rural households.