Business School, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, China.
Dabie Mountain Economic and Social Development Research Center, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, China.
PLoS One. 2024 Sep 3;19(9):e0309675. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309675. eCollection 2024.
Digital technology is shaping our traditional agriculture in unprecedented ways. As a new engine to empower farmers and promote common prosperity in rural areas, the development of the digital economy can help revitalize rural industries, providing strong support for increasing industrial value-added income and farmers' income levels. Based on 676 pooled cross-section data of high-quality farmers in China Guangdong Province from 2020-2021, the article empirically examines the impact of digital technology adoption on the production and business income of high-quality farmers and explores its mechanism of action, based on theoretical analysis and using the ERM model. It is found that the use of digital technology helps to increase the income of high quality farmers in production and business, but effects vary for different income levels and different types of high quality farmers. In addition, tests of the mechanism of action suggest that the introduction of digital technologies can mitigate the negative impact of market distance on the income of high quality farmers in production and business. After applying variable substitution, model replacement, and propensity score matching (PSM) for robustness checks, the research findings still hold true. Therefore, efforts should be made to speed up the upgrading of rural digital technology and other infrastructure, increase training for high quality farmers to improve their digital literacy through multiple channels, for the better marketing of agricultural products.
数字技术正在以前所未有的方式塑造我们的传统农业。作为赋能农民和促进农村共同富裕的新引擎，数字经济的发展可以帮助振兴农村产业，为提高产业附加值收入和农民收入水平提供有力支撑。本文基于 2020-2021 年中国广东省 676 户高素质农民的 pooled 横截面数据，通过理论分析和使用 ERM 模型，实证检验了数字技术采用对高素质农民生产经营收入的影响，并探讨了其作用机制。研究结果表明，数字技术的使用有助于提高高素质农民的生产经营收入，但对不同收入水平和不同类型的高素质农民的影响效果存在差异。此外，作用机制的检验表明，数字技术的引入可以减轻市场距离对高素质农民生产经营收入的负面影响。经过变量替换、模型替换和倾向得分匹配（PSM）的稳健性检验，研究结果仍然成立。因此，应努力加快农村数字技术和其他基础设施的升级，通过多种渠道增加高素质农民的培训，提高他们的数字素养，以更好地销售农产品。
