Digital Technology Adoption,Social Capital And Farmers’ Entrepreneurship

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that we should strengthen the policy of giving priority to employment,improve the guarantee system for promoting entrepreneurship and creating jobs,and expand the channels for farmers to increase their incomes and get rich.How to use digital technology more efficiently in the digital era to promote farmers’ entrepreneurship,drive rural farmers’ employment and income with high-quality entrepreneurship,comprehensively promote rural revitalization,and accelerate the modernization of agriculture and rural development is the key to solving the "three rural issues" in the new era,and to accelerate the construction of a strong agricultural country as well as a livable,workable and beautiful countryside.This article aims to comprehensively explore the impact of digital technology adoption on farmers’ entrepreneurship from the perspective of digital technology adoption,introduce social capital as a key variable,analyze the impact mechanism of digital technology adoption on farmers’ entrepreneurship,straighten out the relationship among digital technology adoption,social capital and farmers’ entrepreneurship,and uncover the "black box" of digital technology adoption on farmers’ entrepreneurial.First,this paper explores the effect of digital technology adoption on farmers’ entrepreneurship using an endogenous transformation Probit model,and tests the robustness of the results using a reduced sample and a replacement model,while conducting a heterogeneity analysis across digital technology adoption content,different types of entrepreneurship and different regions.Second,a mediating effects test model was used to examine whether social capital played a mediating role in the impact of digital technology adoption on farmers’ entrepreneurship and to explore its role in the impact of digital technology adoption on farmers’ entrepreneurship in two dimensions,virtual social capital and real social capital,respectively.Finally,Heckman two-stage model was used to empirically test the effect of digital technology adoption on farmers’ entrepreneurial performance.The results show that:(1)The adoption of digital technology can significantly promote farmers’ entrepreneurship.Moreover,the results still hold after robustness tests by reducing the sample and changing the model method to binary logit,propensity score matching(PSM),indicating that the model results are robust.However,the result of heterogeneity analysis shows that digital technology adoption has a significant promoting effect on non-agricultural entrepreneurship and agriculture-related entrepreneurship,the effect on non-agricultural entrepreneurship is larger,but the promotion effect on multi-industry entrepreneurship fails to pass the test.Different digital technology adoption content will promote farmers’ entrepreneurship,but there is a heterogeneity of "online investment and financing > online business and work> online learning >online entertainment> online shopping or life services > online browsing information".The impact of frequency of different digital technology adoption on different types of farmers’ entrepreneurship is similarly heterogeneous: all frequencies of digital technology adoption promote non-agricultural entrepreneurship,but only online entertainment and online learning promote agriculture-related entrepreneurship,and only online learning promotes multi-industry entrepreneurship.In addition,the promoting effect of digital technology adoption on peasant household entrepreneurship is characterized by regional heterogeneity of "western region >eastern region > central region".(2)Social capital plays a partial mediating role in the positive impact of digital technology adoption on farmers’ entrepreneurship and non-agricultural entrepreneurship,but the mediating effect between digital technology adoption and agriculturerelated entrepreneurship is not significant.Specific to different social capital,virtual social capital plays a partial mediating role in promoting the adoption of digital technology to rural households’ entrepreneurship and non-agricultural entrepreneurship.However,because the adoption of digital technology does not directly improve the real social capital of rural households,the partial mediating role of real social capital does not exist.(3)Digital technology adoption has a significant promoting effect on the farmers’ entrepreneurial performance,and this promoting effect exists in both non-agricultural entrepreneurship and agriculture-related entrepreneurship,but the promoting effect of digital technology adoption on the entrepreneurial performance of multi-industry is not significant,and different digital technology adoption behaviors have a significant heterogeneity on the entrepreneurial performance of different types of rural households.Therefore,we should further improve the rural digital infrastructure and improve the utilization rate of digital technology.To strengthen digital skills training and improve the ability to use digital technology;Digital technology should be used to shape new rural networks and expand farmers’ social capital.We should strengthen the cultivation of the rural entrepreneurial ecosystem and improve the quality of farmers’ entrepreneurship.It is necessary to set up a model of peasant household entrepreneurship and strengthen demonstration and guidance.