Has Electronic Commerce Growth Narrowed the Urban–Rural Income Gap? The Intermediary Effect of the Technological Innovation

Abstract

In the internet era, the development of e-commerce has had an important impact on all aspects of society. Many previous studies focused on the social and economic effects of the development of e-commerce. However, previous studies paid little attention to the impact of e-commerce development on the urban–rural income gap. Here, the influence of electronic commerce growth on the urban–rural income gap is investigated based on Chinese provincial panel data. The result reveals that electronic commerce growth measured by per capita express volume (pair value) can effectively explain the urban–rural income gap, i.e., the income gap between cities and the countryside is reduced with the rise of the electronic commerce growth level after a series of possible factors for the urban–rural income gap (e.g., urbanization rate, industrial proportion, dependency ratio, and human capital) are controlled. In the abovementioned conclusions, the influence of electronic commerce growth on the income gap between cities and the countryside still takes on significance even after the use of the post office number and the mileage of grade roads in 1991 as the instrumental variables of the current electronic commerce growth and the robustness test. The growth of electronic commerce is a vital new approach for adjusting the urban–rural income distribution pattern. The study further reveals that electronic commerce growth does not directly affect the urban–rural income gap by affecting technological innovation. The research results of this study provide a reference for electronic commerce growth and the income distribution of cities and the countryside.

Hacia el Futuro Digital: E-commerce y Transformación en el Contexto Ecuatoriano

“…Además existe una carencia importante tanto en talento humano respecto a las habilidades que requiere el comercio electrónico, así como altos gastos económicos (Xie et al, 2022). En base a las investigaciones realizadas por D. Wang (2023), se concluye que el crecimiento del comercio electrónico es eficaz para disminuir la disparidad de ingresos entre lo rural y lo urbano. El comercio electrónico está transformándose rápidamente como una nueva forma de negocio que está teniendo un impacto importante tanto económico como socialmente las áreas rurales de China; esto a su vez también juega un rol fundamental para impulsar y revitalizar estas regiones.…”

Development of Platform Economy and Urban–Rural Income Gap: Theoretical Deductions and Empirical Analyses

“…rho, indicating a significant spatial spillover effect of the development of the platform economy on neighboring regions. To further analyze the spatial effect of platform economy on closing the urban-rural income gap, the effect decomposition is carried out on the spatial regression results in this paper, with the results shown in Columns (4), (5), and ( 6) in Table 11. The regression results reveal the direct influence of local platform economy and the indirect influence of platforms in neighboring regions on urban-rural income gap and validate the above-mentioned Hypothesis 3.…”

“…Column (4) shows a direct effect, indicating that the development of the platform economy has significantly narrowed the urban-rural income inequality. Column (5) shows the indirect effect of the development of platform economies in neighboring regions on the local urban-rural income gap, with a coefficient of −0.811 indicating that it significantly contributes to the balanced development of local urban-rural areas. As technology and knowledge have strong spatial spillover, platform enterprises in neighboring regions provide opportunities for rural development through imitation and cooperation, data sharing, and collaborative research and development, which promote higher levels of technological innovation and industrial transformation.…”

“…Common prosperity is the universal sharing of the fruits of development, which is an important part of people's aspirations for a better life. However, in developing countries, the problem of the urban-rural duality and unbalanced and inadequate urban-rural 2 of 25 development is widespread [5]. Exploring the causes of the urban-rural income gap and promoting common prosperity have become important issues for developing countries to achieve economic growth and sustainable development.…”