Research on the Impact of Internet Use on Farmers’ Adoption of Agricultural Socialized Services

Abstract

Developing agricultural socialized services is of great significance for promoting agricultural sustainable development and ensuring food security. The use of the Internet provides new opportunities to promote the development of agricultural socialized services. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in 2016 and 2018 with 8850 observations, this paper investigates the effects of Internet use on farmers’ adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural socialized services, and explores the mediating effect of social networks. The adoption of agricultural socialized services is divided into adoption decision and adoption degree, and the Probit model and Tobit model are used for empirical analysis. The results showed that: (1) Internet use has a significant positive impact on both the adoption decision and the adoption degree of agricultural socialized services. Specifically, the impact of Internet use on the adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural machinery services is greater than that of agricultural hired labor services. (2) The mechanism analysis found that social networks partially mediated the effect of Internet use on farmers’ adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural socialized services. Furthermore, social networks have a greater mediating effect on the influence of Internet use on farmers’ adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural machinery services compared to agricultural hired labor services. (3) The heterogeneity test found that Internet use has no significant impact on the adoption of agricultural socialized services by older farmers and farmers with a low education level. Therefore, it is crucial to fully leverage the potential of the Internet to facilitate the supply and demand of agricultural socialized services. Moreover, it is essential to integrate the market of agricultural socialized services with the rural social network to realize the synergy of “Internet plus social network”. This integration facilitates the organic connection between small farmers and modern agricultural development.

The Influence of Digital Literacy on the Phenomenon of Deviation between Farmers’ E-Commerce Sales Willingness and Behavior: Evidence from Rural China

“…Hypothesis 3 has been validated. found that internet use has a positive impact on the adoption of agricultural production services [37], and the effectiveness of internet use is related to digital literacy. This article confirms the positive impact of digital literacy on the adoption of agricultural production services by farmers, filling a gap in existing research.…”

“…Small-scale farmers participating in e-commerce sales face barriers such as a lack of funds, technology, and labor [32,33]. Farmers with digital literacy are more easily able to access financial [34,35] and agricultural production services [36,37] through formal channels, enabling them to overcome the barriers of insufficient funds, technology, and labor for participating in e-commerce sales and leading to the transformation of e-commerce sales intention into behavior. Based on this, the present study explores the financial access mechanism and agricultural production service access mechanism through which digital literacy impacts the deviation between farmers' e-commerce sales intention and behavior.…”

Agricultural socialized services and Chinese food security: examining the threshold effect of land tenure change

“…Notably, these services surmount the constraints of small landholdings by consolidating petite plots into larger farms through farmland transfer and consolidation, enabling economies of scale and substantial investment in advanced technologies (Zang et al, 2022). Furthermore, ASS provide access to knowledge-sharing networks and market intelligence, empowering farmers to make informed decisions regarding crop selection, planting schedules, and pricing strategies (Yang et al, 2023). Nonetheless, the mechanism by which ASS affects grain production has not been fully explored.…”

Reaching a Wider Audience: Instagram’s Role in Dairy Cow Nutrition Education and Engagement

“…It reaches to the general population, who are becoming more concerned with how their food is produced and the welfare of the animals involved. Recognizing the gaps in the current state of knowledge regarding the use of social media to promote specialized, scientific agricultural knowledge [9], we embarked on this journey. Our main goal was to establish an interactive learning platform that engages both students and professionals in the field, as well as the general public, in understanding the dairy cow nutrition and management.…”