A Randomized Controlled Experimental Research On Influence Of Informatization To Farmers’ Quality Of Life

In recent years, governments at all levels in China continued to increase the investment on rural informatization construction, but often could not reach the desired effect, and the phenomenon of the digital divide between urban and rural residents was still significant. For the reasons, from the government’s side, although lots of work has been done on the infrastructure construction, service system building and publicity, the phenomenon of image project is still prominent, and the dissemination channels of agricultural information are not enough. From the farmers’side, most farmers have information literacy problems, such as low participation, insufficient use of information channels, and lack of information consciousness, which seriously restricted the effects of the rural informatization construction. Therefore, to explore the farmers’ information literacy influence on the quality of life, and the effective means of rural informatization, have become important problems to be studied.From the point of theoretical background, the existing research mainly focused on the connotation, dimensions and influencing factors of the digital divide, rural informatization, farmers’information literacy and quality of life, but less on the relationships among them, nor on the influence mechanism of informatization to farmers’ quality of life. Therefore, this study is a new exploration in theory, and has important theoretical significance. From the practical point, this study firstly used randomized controlled experimental method to conduct the research of rural informatization problems, not only has great significance to the enrichment of rural informatization theory and policy making, but also will promote the experimental research in the field of social science in China.Content of this article is divided into eight chapters:Chapter Ⅰ is the introduction, which elaborated the research background of this article, including realistic background and theoretical background; proposed the research questions, and showed the research content and chapter arrangement; discussed the research methods and the technical route, and pointed out the innovation of this article.Chapter Ⅱ is the literature review, which firstly reviewed the existing related literature of digital divide and rural informatization, carried on the detailed combing on the the key variables in this research, such as farmers’ information literacy, quality of life, and willingness to pay on ICT. On the basis of these, explored the theoretical basis from the the theories of new economic growth and public goods. At the same time, summarized the related theories and case analysis of randomized controlled experimental method, and laid a foundation for using this method on the study of influence of informatization to farmers’ quality of life.Chapter III is the model building of the informatization’s influence mechanism on farmers’ quality of life, which conducted theoretical analysis on the relationships among informationization, farmers’information literacy and quality of life; discussed the informatization’s influence mechanism on farmers’ quality of life, where farmers’ information literacy played a role of intermediary; and put forward the research hypotheses and the conceptual model of the influence mechanism.Chapter Ⅳ is the compilation of farmers’ information literacy scale. According to the existing theory and related survey results, this study proposed basic structural dimension of Farmers’ Information Literacy Scale and compiled the items of it. By pre-testing206farmers in rural areas and deleting inconsistent items with exploratory factor analysis,15items were included in the final scale, classified into five dimensions:information demand consciousness, information valuation, information acquire ability, comprehensive ability and sharing ability. The reliability and validity were tested in426farmers and proved to be good, and could be a quantitative tool for evaluating farmers’ information literacy.Chapter Ⅴ is the randomized controlled experiment research. By using the research tool which is in the international academic frontier, this study designed and implemented an experiment, the control conditions of which were provide free computer, access broadband Internet and provide ICT training. The aim of this experiment is to examine the informatization’s influence mechanism on farmers’quality of life. The results showed that, the number of internet users in the control group, experimental group B and experimental group A all increased during the experimental period, in which the experimental group A is the most significant, and the purpose of internet use of this group improved significantly too.Chapter Ⅵ is the empirical test of the informatization’s influence mechanism on farmers’ quality of life, where farmers’ information literacy played a role of intermediary. In details, the experimental method was adopted on the test of informatization’s influence on farmers’ information literacy; the structural equation model method was adopted on the test of the influence from farmers’ information literacy to their life satisfaction; the multiple regression analysis method was dopted on the test of the influence from farmers’ information literacy to their incomes, and informatization’s influence on farmers’ quality of life. Most of the research hypotheses were supported by the empirical findings in this study.Chapter VII is the study on farmers’willingness to pay for ICT. Logit and Tobit models were used to analyse farmers’willingness to pay for ICT and the influencing factors of it. Results showed that farmers’willingness to pay for ICT was443Yuan and low compared with the cost of ICT expenses; the probability of farmers’willingness to pay for ICT was not only related with their age, education, and income level, but also related with the ICT training, internet use, and their information literacy.Chapter VIII is the conclusion and prospect, which discussed and summarized the main research conclusions and policy recommendations, pointed out the limitations and deficiencies of this research, and put forward the direction for further study.The innovation points are mainly concentrated in the following aspects:(1)According to the existing theory and related survey results, this study proposed basic structural dimension of Farmers’ Information Literacy Scale and compiled the items of it. By using the method of factor analysis, a set of suitable scale was developed, and could be a quantitative tool for evaluating farmers’information literacy.(2)By using the randomized controlled experiment which is a tool in the international academic frontier, this study designed and implemented an experiment, the control conditions of which were provide free computer, access broadband Internet and provide ICT training, and then, analysed the difference between different informatization ways’influences on farmers’ information literacy and their quality of life, by comparing the results on different experimental group before and after the experiment.(3)Discussed the informatization’s influence mechanism on farmers’ quality of life, in which the informatization was divided into information infrastructure and ICT services input, farmers’ information literacy played a role of intermediary, and the farmers’ quality of life was divided into life satisfaction and income. By using the methods of experiment, structural equation model, and multiple regression analysis, the influence mechanism model was empirically tested.(4)Based on the consumer choice theory, this study established the model of farmers’willingness to pay for ICT. By estimating Logit and Tobit models on the basis of data from field visit, farmers’willingness to pay for ICT and the influencing factors of it were analysed, and the low efficiency of financial input in improving rural ICT development was explained from the point of view of WTP.