Digital literacy and farmers' entrepreneurial behavior-Empirical analysis based on CHFS2019 micro data

Qingyun Bai; Haipeng Chen; Jie Zhou; Guohong Li; Dundang Zang; Yaya Sow; Qianling Shen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0288245

Digital literacy and farmers' entrepreneurial behavior-Empirical analysis based on CHFS2019 micro data

PLoS One. 2023 Jul 26;18(7):e0288245. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288245. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Qingyun Bai¹, Haipeng Chen¹, Jie Zhou¹, Guohong Li¹, Dundang Zang¹, Yaya Sow¹, Qianling Shen¹

Affiliation

¹ College of Economics, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China.

Abstract

Farmers' entrepreneurship is an important engine to comprehensively help promote rural revitalization. Based on data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS2019), this paper empirically examines the effect of digital literacy on farmers' entrepreneurial behavior using the Probit model and instrumental variable method; and examines the mediating role of health status in this effect using the mediation effect model, combined with the Sobel and Bootstrap tests. The results of the study showed that (1) digital literacy positively influenced farmers' entrepreneurial behavior at the 1% significant level, and this positive influence showed some differences across gender and age; (2) health status played a mediating effect in the positive influence of digital literacy on farmers' entrepreneurial behavior. Accordingly, policy recommendations are made to foster farmers' digital literacy, encourage farmers' entrepreneurship, and ensure farmers' "digital health" services.

Copyright: © 2023 Bai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Agriculture* / methods
China
Farmers*
Humans
Literacy
Rural Population

Grants and funding

This study was funded by 2022 Sichuan Provincial Social Science Planning Key Project SC22A017, and by the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, "Research on the Synergistic Path of Carbon Reduction, Pollution Reduction, Green Expansion and Growth in Sichuan" (Grant No. SC22ZD005). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.