Research On The Impacts And Mechanisms Of Digital Literacy On The Welfare Of Rural Households

The most complex and onerous task of solidly promoting the process of common prosperity still lies in rural areas.At this stage,there are disparities in material life with income levels as the core and disparities in spiritual life in terms of happiness between urban and rural areas,between different groups in rural areas,and between rural areas in different regions.Therefore,studying how to improve and enhance rural families’ material and spiritual well-being is a necessary and proper condition for achieving common prosperity for farmers,rural areas,and even all people.The digital economy is an essential technological foundation and long-term mechanism for promoting the process of common prosperity,which involves economic growth,improvement of people’s well-being,and fair social distribution in rural areas.The mechanism mainly relies on "rural digital empowerment," which is to empower economic development,drive rural revitalization,and enhance the well-being of rural families through digital technologies of hardware and software.Although the construction of information infrastructure in hardware solves the problem of digital access,it is difficult to change the degree of embedding of rural households in the digital economy.Digital literacy,a critical human capital in the new digital environment,may determine the degree of rural households’ participation in the digital economy and thus reap the dividends of informatization and digitization to improve their welfare standards.In conclusion,in the context of the digital economy and common wealth,it is crucial to explore the relationship between digital literacy and the welfare of rural households to enhance people’s welfare and promote the process of common wealth.Based on the welfare economics system and the background of common prosperity,this paper constructs a rural family welfare framework.Starting from the connotation,stage,key points and difficulties of common prosperity,this paper constructs a welfare framework that can objectively reflect the current situation of rural family welfare in China,namely,entrepreneurial development,income growth,relative poverty reduction and subjective well-being.Based on relevant theories,a theoretical analysis framework is constructed to deeply analyze the impact and mechanism of digital literacy on rural family welfare.Among them,the mechanism analysis framework of " digital literacy→opportunity identification and resource acquisition→household entrepreneurship development " is constructed by referring to the theory of entrepreneurship process and dynamic change of resource demand.The mechanism analysis framework of " digital literacy→land,capital,and labor factor→family income growth " is constructed by referring to the household production decision-making model.Based on the theory of social capital,the mechanism analysis framework of " digital literacy→structural,relational,and cognitive capital→relative poverty reduction " is constructed.Based on Marx ’s theory and relative deprivation theory,this paper constructs a mechanism analysis framework of " digital literacy → work flexibility,relative income,and consumption structure→subjective well-being ".On this basis,the data of China Household Finance Survey(CHFS)and China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)are used to empirically test the total effect and mechanism of(different types)digital literacy on rural family entrepreneurship development welfare,income growth welfare,relative poverty reduction welfare and subjective welfare,and combined with heterogeneity analysis to explore the differences in the welfare effects of digital literacy among different rural groups,and then discuss the role of digital literacy cultivation in promoting the process of common prosperity.The main conclusions are as follows:Digital literacy helps to enhance rural households’ entrepreneurial development welfare(entrepreneurial behavior,entrepreneurial performance,and entrepreneurial survival),and this welfare effect is heterogeneous across different characteristic groups;the marginal effect of digital literacy on entrepreneurial behavior and performance is higher in the youth,group,lowincome group,and high digital rural development level group than in the middle-aged,highincome group and low development level group,the marginal effect of digital literacy on the survival of returning to rural entrepreneurship is higher.The facilitative effect of digital literacy on rural household entrepreneurial survival is significantly present in areas with high digital development levels.Different types of digital literacy have different effects on the welfare of entrepreneurial development.The marginal effects are ranked as follows: digital business literacy >digital learning literacy > digital social literacy > digital entertainment literacy.Regarding the mechanism of action of digital literacy affecting rural households’ entrepreneurial development welfare,improving the problem of opportunity identification and resource access is a virtual channel through which rural households’ digital literacy exerts entrepreneurial development welfare.In conclusion,digital literacy helps to improve rural households’ entrepreneurial entry and entrepreneurial activities,and digital literacy is more helpful in enhancing the entrepreneurial development opportunities of the relatively bottom group(relatively lower income)and promoting equalization of opportunities.Digital literacy significantly positively affects rural households’ income growth and welfare.In terms of income structure,digital literacy positively affects property income,wage income,and business income.However,it does not significantly affect transfer income,and digital literacy’s income growth effect size is ranked: business income > wage income > property income.The heterogeneity analysis found that digital literacy showed a marginal decreasing pattern of income growth welfare for rural households with different income stock bases.In addition,the regional digital village development level helped strengthen digital literacy’s income effect.There is variability in the impact of different types of digital literacy on income growth,with digital business literacy having the highest marginal impact on rural households’ income growth.In terms of mechanism of action,digital literacy facilitates the adjustment of rural households’ allocation of production factors of land,capital,and labor(into the non-farm sector),which leads to income growth.In conclusion,the income growth welfare effect of digital literacy is significantly present,and digital literacy not only has an income growth welfare effect but also promotes income distribution equalization,therefore,contribute to the common prosperity of the countryside.Digital literacy has a significant multidimensional relative poverty reduction effect.In terms of dynamic relative poverty,digital literacy significantly alleviates both two consecutive periods of poverty and three consecutive periods of multidimensional relative poverty for rural households.The heterogeneity analysis shows that the regional digital inclusive financial development level helps strengthen the poverty reduction effect of digital literacy.The digital infrastructure in hardware is an essential environment for digital literacy to exert its poverty reduction effect.There are differences in the poverty reduction effects of different types of digital literacy.In order of marginal effects,digital business literacy > digital work literacy > digital entertainment literacy > digital learning literacy > digital social literacy.Regarding the mechanism of action,China is a typical "human society," and social capital has a significant positive effect on the relative poverty of rural households.At the same time,digital literacy changes the way of social interaction among individuals.It helps to improve the structural social capital,relational social capital,and cognitive,social capital of rural households.In conclusion,digital literacy helps alleviate rural households’ static and dynamic multidimensional relative poverty,thus promoting shared prosperity.Digital literacy in rural households has a significant subjective well-being effect,which decomposes by the source of well-being,and digital literacy enhances rural individuals’ job satisfaction and their satisfaction with daily life.The well-being effects of different digital literacy types differed.By comparing the marginal effects,digital learning literacy had the most significant effect on subjective well-being.The happiness effect of digital literacy was heterogeneous across distinct groups,with the happiness effect of digital literacy being higher in the low-education group than in the high-education group and the happiness effect of digital literacy being higher in the low-income group than in the non-low-income group.Improving job flexibility,increasing relative income,and optimizing consumption structure are the essential mechanisms through which digital literacy plays a vital role in the happiness effect of rural households.Digital literacy enhances job satisfaction by increasing job flexibility,and digital literacy enhances life satisfaction by increasing relative income,releasing consumption potential,and optimizing consumption structure.In conclusion,digital literacy has a subjective well-being effect.It helps to narrow the happiness gap between further education and income groups,thus realizing the common prosperity of rural families on the spiritual level.Based on the above findings,this paper suggests that the government needs to comprehensively cultivate and improve the digital literacy and digital skills of rural households;digital literacy-related education resources should be tilted toward low-income groups in rural areas;theoretical and practical teaching should be conducted for the prevalent digital technology application problems;the focus direction of digital literacy education and training should be more focused on business,learning and work;the government needs to continue to improve digital The government needs to continue to improve digital infrastructure construction,build new digital infrastructures such as big data platforms and accelerate the digital transformation of traditional public infrastructures,and strengthen the innovation of digital financial business platforms to guarantee the financial service needs of rural residents;on top of improving digital infrastructure and digital literacy cultivation,the government also needs to promote the digital transformation of rural industries,promote the intelligent and digital development of industries,and create digital industries.