Research On The Impact Of Internet Use On Non-Agricultural Employment Of Rural Labor Force In China

Ensuring employment and people’s livelihood is a major strategic decision made by the Central Economic Work Conference in 2021.Guaranteeing the employment of major groups and maintaining employment stability is the priority orientation for high-quality economic development,and stabilizing the employment of rural labor groups is a key part of stabilizing employment and ensuring people’s livelihood in China.At the same time,digital data has become a modern production factor in the 21 st century,and the Internet,as the core resource in the data element,plays an indispensable role in people’s economic life with its unique use value advantage.Especially for the rural labor force,the Internet provides a relatively convenient capital accumulation channel with its natural advantages of low cost and low threshold,so that the rural labor force can better participate in the employment of the labor market.Therefore,this paper takes the rural labor force as the main research sample,through theoretical and empirical analysis,to verify the role of individual Internet usage on their participation in non-agricultural employment.From the theoretical level,it discusses the impact of Internet use on non-agricultural employment through three paths:increasing social capital,broadening information channels and increasing risk appetite.At the empirical level,this paper matches the five-phase data of the Chinese Family Panel Studies(CFPS)from 2010 to 2018,and uses the Probit model to analyze the impact of Internet use on rural labor non-agricultural employment,and uses a variety of robustness to test the reliability of the results.,and analyze the differences in the impact of the Internet on non-agricultural employment in the eastern,central and western regions from the perspective of regional heterogeneity.This paper further explores the path mechanism of social capital,information channels and risk preference.Through the research,it is found that:(1)Internet use promotes the probability of non-agricultural employment of rural laborers by 9.47%,which is significant at the level of 1%.(2)The robustness of the benchmark results is verified by using the instrumental variable method,replacing key explanations and explained variables,adjusting the data sample period,and propensity score matching.(3)Heterogeneity analysis found that the promotion effect of Internet use on rural non-agricultural employment decreased from east to west.(4)Mechanism analysis found that the use of the Internet promotes the non-agricultural employment of rural labor force through three paths: increasing individual social capital,increasing the importance of using the Internet to obtain information,and increasing risk appetite.