This study examines the impact of agricultural regional public brands (ARPBs) on county-level economic growth in China. We combine panel data for 2,725 counties from 2000 to 2020 with a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) strategy. Using a robust CS-DID estimator to correct for potential biases, we find that ARPB adoption increases per capita GDP by approximately 6.68% (notably higher than the baseline TWFE estimate of 3.94%). Mechanism analysis shows that these effects operate through agricultural modernization, industrial clustering, and enhanced household savings. Heterogeneity analysis shows the effect of ARPBs on economic growth depends on product types, institutions, and regions. We also find positive spatial spillover to neighboring counties. These findings highlight ARPBs as a transformative place-based strategy, offering vital policy insights for leveraging collective reputation to bridge the rural-urban development gap.

Promoting the high-quality development of farmers’ specialized cooperatives and narrowing regional development gaps is critical for advancing China’s rural revitalization strategy. Based on provincial panel data covering 30 Chinese regions from 2015 to 2023, this paper constructs a five-dimensional evaluation index system including standardized operation, operational performance, service scope, driving effect, and industrial upgrading, and adopts the entropy weight method to quantify the comprehensive development level of cooperatives. By combining spatial autocorrelation, kernel density estimation, the Dagum Gini coefficient and the Geodetector model, this paper explores the spatio-temporal evolution, regional disparities and multi-factor coupled driving mechanism of cooperative development. The main findings are as follows: (1) While the total quantity of cooperatives keeps expanding nationwide, their overall development level presents an evolutionary feature of declining first and then rising; industrial upgrading gradually becomes a new growth engine, whereas operational performance and driving effect slip downward. (2) The spatial layout of cooperatives maintains a typical pyramid structure; high-value agglomeration shifts from the Yangtze River Delta to southeast coastal regions, and low-value clusters are persistently concentrated in Northeast China. (3) The overall Dagum Gini coefficient reflects widening-then-shrinking regional gaps, and intra-eastern provincial differences constitute the primary source of nationwide spatial divergence. (4) Household consumption and rural labor force stock serve as core driving factors; regional economic development, agricultural production efficiency, rural human capital and land resource allocation form a coupled driving system, and all explanatory variables show mutual enhancement effects without offsetting interactions. Targeted policy suggestions are put forward to realize balanced and high-quality development of farmers’ specialized cooperatives across China.

Although the widespread use of the Internet in rural areas provides new opportunities for economic growth, whether and how rural women benefit from it remains a question. Guided by Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 and its targets, this study examines the impact of Internet use on rural women’s income by using survey data from 1384 rural households in underdeveloped areas of China. The results indicate that Internet use can significantly increase rural women’s income in underdeveloped areas. Additionally, the income effects of Internet use are heterogeneous across the different purposes of Internet use, income levels, individual characteristics, and family characteristics. Further analysis reveals that increasing labor input and enhancing capital endowment are two important channels through which Internet use increases rural women’s income. The results offer further empirical support for policymakers to utilize the Internet to increase rural women’s income and contribute to poverty alleviation in underdeveloped areas.

This study investigates the role of information and communication technology (ICT) platforms in facilitating e-governance within a rural context. A longitudinal single-case study approach was employed, involving 37 semi-structured interviews from 2019 to 2022. The findings reveal that information asymmetry and persistent tensions between the government and villagers hinder cooperative behaviour in rural governance, at varying degrees throughout all stages of e-governance. Second, a contagion effect is identified, where the government coerces non-cooperative villagers, exacerbating tensions. The coercive and negotiating-compromising mechanism enabled by ICT platforms illustrates how the ICT platform enables the contagion effect occurs during rural policy deployment. Third, the goal incongruence between the government and villagers necessitates the government's utilisation of ICT platforms to adopt active engagement and induce event that encourage goal articulation, which facilitates a better goal alignment between both parties. This approach promotes the observation of collaborative behaviour among villagers and ultimately fosters increased collaboration with the government, that is, mimicking villagers' behaviour. Meanwhile, government stimulation can effectively facilitate the interaction between government and villagers, promoting the negotiation and compromise between the two parties. Such compromises can foster the goal congruence between the two parties, consequently encouraging greater participation from villagers in rural governance. The case offers valuable insights into the mechanisms by which ICT facilitates rural e-governance, thereby holding significant implications for research on ICT-rural governance and governments grappling with challenges in implementing rural policies.

数字乡村建设具有丰富而深刻的价值意蕴,主要体现在数字乡村建设是缩小城乡数字鸿沟的关键举措,是实施乡村振兴战略的重要抓手,是助力农业强国建设的必然选择和推进中国式现代化的有效路径.数字乡村建设的本质在于推动农业农村经济社会的发展动力由工业要素和工业思维主导演进为数字要素和数字思维主导,同时实现数字技术工具理性、制度理性和价值理性的有机统一.城乡之间存在产业差异、功能差异、资源差异和主体差异,这使得数字乡村建设具有自身的特殊性,不能将数字乡村建设视为智慧城市建设在农村地区简单复制.加快推进数字乡村建设,还须加强顶层设计与配套投入,优化数字人才培养与技术供给,建立县域数字创新生态系统,提升农民数字素养与数字参与,引导社会力量加入建设行列.

With the proliferation of information and communication technology in rural areas, rural e-commerce has gradually become a new economic phenomenon in China. Using the national rural e-commerce comprehensive demonstration policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this study examines the causal linkage between rural e-commerce and county-level economic development in China. Its findings, which draw on county-level panel data from 2011 to 2018, indicate that the policy had a positive effect on the county-level economy in China, resulting in an overall increase in county GDP by 3.5 percent (0.7 percent annually). Our analysis further shows that the impact of the policy differed along the region and human capital dimensions. Further analysis reveals that industrial structure and nonagricultural employment were the main channels for the policy to exert a county-level economic impact. Infrastructure improvement in China also plays an important role. The findings emphasize the importance of advancing e-commerce in rural areas to stimulate county-level economic development.

In this study, we assess whether household outsourcing production tasks provided by tobacco cooperatives affect household technical efficiency, using the survey data from 449 households in Guizhou Province, China in 2014. The one-step estimation of the stochastic frontier production function is employed. We also use the instrumental variable approach to address the potential selection biases that may arise from unobserved factors that are correlated with both outsourcing service adoption and technical efficiency. The empirical results show that the farmers' decision to outsource agricultural services provided by cooperatives has a positive effect on technical efficiency. The effects of outsourcing on technical efficiency are highly heterogeneous at different production stages. It is also interesting to note that the magnitudes of outsourcing effects on technical efficiency are similar between labor-intensive services and technology-intensive services.

直播电商集网络直播与电子商务的优势于一体,发展十分迅猛,正日益成为农产品上行的重要途径.本文以服务场景理论为逻辑基础,构建"场景革新—价值重构"分析框架,用以引导对直播电商型塑农产品上行的内在机理分析.相较于传统线下模式,直播电商通过营造高赋能的网络服务场景推动了农产品上行的价值重构,具体表现在直播电商模式使得农产品上行从长链价值传递转变为短链价值传递,从单一价值输出转变为多元价值输出,从单向价值独创转变为多方价值共创.为充分释放直播电商对农产品上行的价值重构红利,政府应重点围绕夯实农产品供应链基础、提升农民直播专业技能、加强农产品直播电商监管以及鼓励开展农产品直播行业自律等方面进行政策部署.

Improving technical efficiency (TE) is crucial for the sustainable growth of smallholder agriculture in developing countries. While there has been a large literature investigating the determinants of smallholders’ agricultural technical efficiency, little is known about the effect of e-commerce on agriculture and crop production efficiency despite the growing importance of rural e-commerce in developing countries. This study, therefore, bridges the research gap by examining the impact of e-commerce adoption on TE using household survey data of wheat farmers in China. We employ the combination of propensity score matching (PSM) and a selectivity-corrected stochastic production frontier model to address the possible selection biases stemming from both observable and unobservable factors. We found that e-commerce adoption would lead to a 2.75 per cent increase in the technical efficiency of wheat production. Our study also complements the existing research of rural e-commerce, which mainly focuses on the benefits of e-commerce from the perspective of market opportunity and farmers’ welfare.

目前数字乡村建设存在的问题 对标智慧城市建设以及欧美发达国家的农业农村数字化发展,目前数字乡村建设还存在一些问题,主要表现在六个方面. 一是重技术推广轻理念创新.当前数字乡村建设主要聚焦在IT技术的推广,而忽略对数字化认知和数字化思维的培育.不少地方生搬硬套智慧城市应用,很难与乡村振兴以及本地区域发展结合在一起.

基于中国健康与养老追踪调查2018年数据,采用倾向得分匹配方法,研究互联网使用对城乡老年人健康的影响.通过抑郁指数、自评健康、就医行为和就医支出四个指标来衡量老年人健康状况.研究表明:互联网使用对农村老年人和城市老年人的自评健康和精神健康均有显著的提升作用,且对农村老年人的影响大于对城市老年人的影响;互联网使用对老年人就医行为的影响存在城乡差异,使用互联网会显著增加城市老年人的就医行为,而对农村老年人就医行为的影响则不显著;互联网使用增加了城市老年人的就医支出,减少了农村老年人的就医支出,然而无论对城市老年人还是对农村老年人就医支出的影响均不显著.总体而言,相比较城市老年人,互联网使用对农村老年人的健康具有更强的促进作用.建议:推进农村地区基础通信设施建设,开发适合老年群体互联网接入的电子产品,开展老年人互联网使用培训,让农村老年人享受互联网带来的红利,为农村地区发展智慧养老奠定基础.

我国农业农村现代化发展存在巨大的数字赋能空间,数字技术将成为实现乡村振兴的有效引擎和持续动力.数字赋能助推乡村振兴,即以物联网、大数据、人工智能、区块链等新一代数字化基础设施为硬件基础,以数据化知识和信息为关键生产要素,以数字技术创新为核心驱动力,以现代互联网信息平台为重要载体,通过数字技术与农业农村发展深度融合,推动乡村产业、生态、文化、治理、服务等方面的数字化转型,促进实现乡村产业兴旺、生态宜居、乡风文明、治理有效、生活富裕.然而,目前我国在数字赋能助推乡村振兴的实践进展上,面临基础设施薄弱、应用水平较低、专业人才匮乏、政策供给不足等问题,今后需要进一步加强农村信息化设施建设、提高农民信息素养与技能、推动数字化专业人才下乡、加大政策出台与配套力度,从而更加充分地释放数字技术的赋能作用.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate e-commerce as a new means to ensure that the urban demand for food can be met during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Because a number of COVID-19 e-commerce models have emerged, this paper discusses whether and (if so) why and how e-commerce can ensure the food supply for urban residents if social distancing becomes a norm and the transport and logistics systems are hindered.Design/methodology/approachThis study used qualitative research methods following the lack of empirical data. The authors referred to relevant literature, statistical data and official reports and comprehensively described the importance of e-commerce in ensuring the safety of food supply to Chinese urban residents under the impact of the epidemic. Corresponding to the traditional case study, this study presented a Chinese case on ensuring food supply through e-commerce during an epidemic.FindingsThe authors found that three e-commerce models played a substantial role in preventing the spread of the epidemic and ensuring the food supply for urban residents. The nationwide e-commerce platforms under market leadership played their roles by relying on the sound infrastructure of large cities and its logistics system was vulnerable to the epidemic. In the worst-affected areas, particularly in closed and isolated communities, the local e-commerce model was the primary model, supplemented by the unofficial e-commerce model based on social relations. Through online booking, centralized procurement and community distribution, the risk of cross infection could be effectively reduced and the food demand could be effectively satisfied. The theoretical explanation further verifies that, apart from e-commerce, a governance system that integrates the government, e-commerce platform, community streets and the unofficial guanxi also impels the success of these models.Originality/valueLessons from China are drawn for other countries struggling to deliver food to those in need under COVID-19. The study not only provides a solution that will ensure constant food supply to urban residents under the COVID-19 epidemic but also provides some reference for the maintenance of the food system of urban residents under the impact of a globalization-related crisis in future.

发展烟农专业合作社是推进传统烟草农业向现代烟草农业转变最为有效的载体.本文基于烟草行业的特殊性,从竞争力、服务能力、社会影响力和发展潜力4个方面考虑,结合德尔菲法和层次分析法确定指标权重,构建了烟农专业合作社绩效评价指标体系,并应用该指标体系对贵州省30家烟农专业合作社绩效进行实证分析.研究发现,贵州省烟农专业合作社整体绩效水平良好,但仍存在区域发展不均衡、自身发展能力不足、社员满意度不高、运行不规范、带头人能力不强等问题.建议加强对烟农专业化合作社政策扶持力度,烟农专业化合作社要健全专业化服务体系、提高社员满意度、培养优秀的合作社带头人并实现规范与发展并重.

电子商务的发展有力地助推了中国小农户与大市场的连接,成了小农户进入大市场的重要途径,也将有助于促进以安全、营养、可持续、有韧性的中国新型农食系统的转型.研究发现,电子商务通过降低信息和交易成本,推动小农进入全球价值链,帮助小农更好地进入市场.物流和通讯基础设施、对小农具有包容性的数字商业平台以及新农人是发展农村电子商务的前提条件.农村电子商务发展需要构建一个由网商、政府、服务商或公共服务主体共同组成的、适合小农发展的电商生态系统.网商是电商发展的主力,负责整体的网络市场运作;政府是电商发展的助力,负责道路、通信等基础设施建设,营造发展氛围,政策引导和统筹协调;服务商则提供代运营、网商孵化、人才培育、资源整合、园区运营等一系列电子商务公共服务.此外,电子商务也可能将无法参与数字经济或缺乏所需技能的小农排除在市场之外,因此,"数字鸿沟"成为在发展农产品电商过程中带来外部区域失衡和内部农户差异的重要影响因素.

This study aims to reveal how e-commerce affects the income gap between urban and rural areas in the context of developing world. An empirical examination was carried out by using the panel data of 11 cities in Zhejiang Province, China, from 2011 to 2018. The results show that there is an inverted-U relationship between e-commerce development and urban-rural income gap. Zhejiang is still on the left side of the inverted-U curve, where e-commerce development increases the urban-rural income gap. The government should create more favorable conditions for the popularization of rural e-commerce and advance the turning point.

This study examines the effects of e-commerce adoption on household income, using survey data of 1,030 households in China. The combination of propensity score matching and difference-in-difference method is employed to address the sample selection bias associated with e-commerce adoption. The results show that ecommerce adopters obtain significantly higher income than non-adopters, and such a significant and large income gain is mainly contributed by the significant increase in sales income. E-commerce adoption has a significant and negative impact on wage income due to the labor substitution effect, while it affects transfer income insignificantly. Additional analysis reveals that the income effects of e-commerce adoption are heterogeneous across geographic locations and household-level characteristics.

基于2004—2019年中央一号文件,对农村信息化政策进行回顾与前瞻.中央政府对农村信息化发展的顶层设计力度不断增强,形成"速度-广度-质量"三位一体的农村信息基础设施建设政策框架,农业信息化建设由单一技术提升向推进全程信息化的技术综合集成转变,以"两个体系、一站一园、综合示范"为抓手加快农村电子商务发展,由乡村教育、医疗和金融的信息化发展入手逐步推进"在线城乡一体化".未来政策可重点着力于以下方面:一是加快实现农村宽带网络全覆盖,推进提速降费;二是健全农村综合信息服务体系,提高农民信息素养;三是推进农业物联网和大数据的技术研发与应用示范;四是建立促进贫困地区农村电子商务发展的支撑体系;五是提升乡村在线教育、远程医疗和互联网金融的应用率;六是支持智慧村务建设,推进乡村社区数字化治理.