Abstract:

From the two perspectives of policy design and real works, the paper examines the role of government in consumption assistance. Based on the analysis of the national policies of consumption assistance, this study’s findings show that in policy design, the diversified attributes of consumption assistance subjects are obvious, including government departments, public institutions, state-owned enterprises, etc.; the connection between multiple subjects has the characteristics of “government department +” and has multiple attributes such as section leadership, guidance, horizontal collaboration or cooperation, and policy supports that cover supply-side, connection-side, and demand-side entities. The investigations in GH provincial departments show that the implementation of consumption assistance has the interactive characteristics of both respective responsibilities and multiple aggregation, which is specifically manifested in each department performing its own duties and achieving full coverage of “three-terminal” connections. They all focus on some common problems such as “goods are not good enough”, “difficult to sell” or “difficult to buy”, and attach importance to the “real problem” and market capacity building, respect for the law of development, integration of resources to build a pilot, etc. From the case study, the startup functions of government for consumption assistance include empowering market transactions with administrative power on the demand side; incubating circulation enterprises and initiating market-oriented growth, brand building, and industrial growth on the supply side.

Key words: consumption assistance, government mechanism, multi-directional connection and initiation, policy text