Abstract: The quality of digital finance development has an important influence on the level of residents' sense of happiness. Based on the self-determination theory and using the data of China General Social Survey from 2010 to 2017, this paper empirically tests the influence and mechanism of digital finance on Chinese residents' subjective well-being. The findings show that the influence of digital finance on subjective well-being is u-shaped, that is, the early low level of digital finance has reduced residents' subjective well-being, but the high level of digital finance in the middle and later period can effectively improve the subjective well-being. This means that the development of digital finance has two sides: it may harm the interests of residents and reduce the level of subjective well-being, and it may also enhance the level of subjective well-being by improving the efficiency and fairness. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a complete digital finance development and supervision system. The results of the mechanism study show that digital finance can have an effect on the subjective well-being by affecting individual's economic position, mental condition and subjective social status. Therefore, under the conditions of improving the regulatory system, the construction of digital finance should be continuously strengthened, and the enterprises should be guided to establish a multi-category financial service system through financial and tax policies, so as to enhance the residents' subjective well-being.

Key words: digital finance, subjective well-being, economic position, mental condition, subjective social status