| The outline of Digital Rural Development Strategy(2019)emphasizes that comprehensively activating the market,activating elements and activating the main body are the core requirements of China’s deepening rural reform at present and for a period of time in the future.Under the background of agricultural supply-side structural reform,China’s rural land,labor,capital and technological factor markets have all been developed to varying degrees.However,due to asymmetric and incomplete information,farmers are faced with high transaction costs in factor markets,which restricts farmers from optimizing factor allocation and improving production efficiency.With the universal coverage of 4G network in administrative villages across the country,the development of rural network communication and information technology has alleviated the problem of asymmetry and insufficiency of farmers’ participation in factor market information to a certain extent,thus helping farmers to optimize factor allocation and improve production efficiency.On the other hand,with the continuous improvement of the construction of Internet infrastructure in rural areas of our country,the digital divide has gradually changed from the gap in access to information and communication equipment to the gap in utilization ability.The level of farmers’ digital literacy is directly related to the extent to which ICT alleviates the problem of information asymmetry and inadequacy faced by their participation in the factor market.The key problems to be solved in this paper include: first,how to effectively evaluate the digital literacy level of farmers? Second,how does digital literacy affect farmers’ production decisions and thus affect technical efficiency? Focusing on the above issues,this paper makes theoretical analysis and empirical test on how digital literacy affects farmers’ production decision-making and technical efficiency,and puts forward targeted policy recommendations according to the empirical research results.According to the research idea of " problemoriented→theoretical research→empirical research→policy research",the research content of this paper can be summarized as follows:1.Construct the theoretical analysis framework of "digital literacy→production decisionmaking→technical efficiency".The research objectives are divided into three parts: one is to define the concept and connotation of the key terms,including digital literacy and production decision-making.Secondly,by using the method of factor analysis,the evaluation system of farmers’ digital literacy is designed from two aspects of digital ability and digital consciousness,and digital literacy is divided into three dimensions: digital evaluation ability,digital acquisition ability and digital consciousness.Thirdly,the influence mechanism and path of digital literacy on farmers’ production decision-making and efficiency are analyzed theoretically to provide theoretical support for the empirical analysis.2.The empirical analysis of the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ production decisionmaking and technical efficiency includes five parts: the first is to study the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ farmland transfer decision-making.The farmland transfer decision is divided into two dimensions: whether to transfer or not and the transfer area.IV-Probit model,2SLS model,Heckman model and IV-Heckman model are used to empirically test the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ farmland transfer decision.The second is to study the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ labor allocation decision.The labor allocation decision of rural households is subdivided into three dimensions: agricultural input,non-agricultural employment input and self-employment input.OLS model,2SLS model and seemingly unrelated model are used to empirically test the impact of digital literacy on labor allocation decision of rural households.Third,it studies the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ productive capital investment decision.Taking chemical fertilizer input,organic fertilizer input and pesticide input as examples,OLS model,2SLS model,seemingly unrelated regression model and PSM model are used to empirically test the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ productive capital input decisions.Fourth,it studies the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ technology choice decision.Taking the professional pest and disease control technology as an example,this paper empirically tests the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ technology choice decision-making by using Probit model,IV-Probit model and PSM model.Fifth,it studies the impact of digital literacy on agricultural technology efficiency.The stochastic frontier method,Tobit model,IV-Tobit model and PSM model are used to empirically test the influence of digital literacy on technical efficiency,and the intermediary effect model was used to empirically test the mediating role played by farmers’ production decision-making between digital literacy and technical efficiency.Finally,the following five empirical analysis conclusions are obtained:First,digital literacy significantly promotes farmers’ participation in farmland transfer to market and farmland transfer area.The influence of different dimensions of digital literacy on farmers’ land rental decision is heterogeneous.From the perspective of whether farmers participate in farmland transfer,the influence coefficients of digital literacy in different dimensions are acquisition ability,awareness and evaluation ability,and all are significant at1% level.From the perspective of farmers’ farmland transfer area,at the level of 10%,the impact of evaluation ability is greater than that of acquisition ability,and consciousness fails the significance test.Heterogeneity analysis shows that digital literacy plays a more important role in the decision-making of farmland transfer of farmers in high-income group and higheducation group.Human capital(education level,health status),land rent,land initial endowment and asset specificity are also important factors affecting farmers’ farmland transfer decision-making.Secondly,digital literacy has a significant impact on the allocation of rural labor force.Research shows that with the improvement of digital literacy level,rural households tend to reduce the family agricultural production labor force and allocate more labor force to nonagricultural employment and self-employment.The influence of different dimensions of digital literacy on farmers’ labor allocation decision is heterogeneous: the influence of digital acquisition ability on rural household labor allocation decisions is significant at the 10% level,but the influence of digital evaluation ability and digital consciousness on rural household labor allocation decisions is not significant.Heterogeneity analysis shows that digital literacy plays a more important role in the decision-making of labor allocation of farmers in low-age group and high-education group.Human capital(age,gender,education level),family characteristics,initial land endowment,asset specificity,and village characteristics are also important factors affecting the labor allocation decisions of rural households.Third,digital literacy has a significant impact on farmers’ productive capital input.The research shows that the higher the level of digital literacy,farmers tend to increase the input of organic fertilizer and pesticides,but the impact on the input of chemical fertilizer is not significant.There is heterogeneity in the influence of different dimensions of digital literacy on farmers’ productive capital input: the impact of acquisition ability on farmers’ productive capital input is significant at the 5% level,while the impact of evaluation ability and awareness on farmers’ productive capital input is not significant.Heterogeneity analysis shows that digital literacy plays a more important role in the productive capital input in low age group,middle age group and high education level group.The characteristics of the head of household(age,education,health status and village cadre status),annual household income,production characteristics(planting scale,degree of fragmentation and outsourcing services),and village characteristics are also important factors affecting farmers’ productive capital investment.Fourthly,digital literacy significantly promotes farmers’ choice of technology for unified defense and governance.The higher the digital literacy level of farmers,the higher the probability of adopting the unified defense and governance technology.There is heterogeneity in the influence of different dimensions of digital literacy on the technological choice of farmers’ unified defense and governance technology: the influence of digital acquisition ability on farmers’ choice of unified defense and governance technology is significant at the 5% level,while the influence of digital evaluation ability and digital consciousness on farmers’ choice of unified defense and governance technology is not significant.Heterogeneity analysis showed that digital literacy had a greater impact on the selection of unified defense and governance technology in the low age group,the middle age group and the large group of farmers.The characteristics of the head of household(gender,education,health status and risk preference),production characteristics(planting scale and land fragmentation)are also important factors that affect the technological choice of farmers’ unified defense governance.Fifth,digital literacy significantly promotes technical efficiency.The research shows that the higher the digital literacy level of farmers,the higher the efficiency of their grain technology.There is heterogeneity in the influence of different dimensions of digital literacy on technical efficiency: the impact of digital acquisition ability on technical efficiency of farmers is significant at 1% level,while the impact of digital evaluation ability and digital awareness is not significant at 10% level.Heterogeneity analysis showed that digital literacy played a greater role in improving the technical efficiency in the low and high age groups,the middle and high education groups.The characteristics of household head(age and political identity)and family characteristics(the size of family population)are also important factors affecting the technical efficiency.The test of mediating effect shows that farmers’ production decision-making plays a partial mediating role between digital literacy and technical efficiency,that is,the theoretical analysis framework of "digital literacy→production decision-making→technical efficiency" constructed in this paper has been verified.3.Based on the above empirical analysis,policy analysis is carried out from three aspects:cultivating farmers’ digital literacy,optimizing factor allocation and improving grain technical efficiency.First,relevant departments should attach importance to digital literacy education and training in rural areas based on the implementation of rural revitalization strategy,cultivate farmers’ digital awareness,constantly improve farmers’ ability to obtain and evaluate information,and improve farmers’ digital literacy level.Second,relying on the progress of information and communication technology,improve the effectiveness of agricultural information provided by the Internet platform,support the improvement of agricultural factor market environment,and promote the development of agricultural factor market;Third,relying on the "Internet Plus" technology,we will optimize the allocation of agricultural production factors and improve the technical efficiency of grain production. |
PDF Full Text Request