Research on the Effect of the Rural Wealth-Leader on Poverty Reduction of Farmers—Based on the Questionnaire Survey in China

Abstract

The rural wealth-leader is one of the 10 projects of targeted poverty alleviation in the period of poverty alleviation. As the “leading wild goose” in rural areas, the personal characteristics of the rural wealth-leader directly affect the effect of stabilizing poverty and increasing income of poor farmers. Based on the survey of the rural wealth-leader in 10 cities and 21 counties, this paper systematically analyzes the path of poverty reduction by the rural wealth-leader, combs out the key individual characteristics that affect farmers’ poverty reduction, and puts forward a research hypothesis. Through empirical analysis, the research hypothesis is tested and the influencing mechanism is analyzed. The model results show that: The rural wealth-leader has a significant effect on increasing farmers’ income and eliminating poverty. The rural wealth-leader with high education level and engaged in e-commerce has a significant effect on increasing farmers’ income. Party members and the skilled rural wealth-leaders have a significant impact on rural households’ poverty alleviation. The income increasing effect of culture and education is negatively affected by corporate loans, and the income increasing effect of e-commerce is negatively affected by corporate profits. Therefore, we should improve the profit distribution mode of e-commerce related enterprises to avoid farmers being marginalized in the process of e-commerce development. The skills, management and financial knowledge training of the rural wealth-leaders should be strengthened to improve their knowledge and skills. Meanwhile, supporting fiscal, financial and tax policies should be improved.

1. Introduction

In 2015, China’s State Council Poverty Alleviation Office proposed “the top ten projects of poverty alleviation”. Cultivating the rural wealth-leaders are one of the top 10 projects. In 2018, the Party Committee of the Poverty Alleviation Office of the State Council issued the “Guidance Opinions on the Cultivating Poor Village Entrepreneurship” (National Development (2018) No. 2). Guidance provides clarifying the work goals from the choice of selection of leadership, increase training, and improving poverty reduction, and strengthening incentive measures. Later, meetings were held in Guyuan, Ningxia, Shanglin, Guangxi, and Yanbian, Jilin, to promote the training of the rural wealth-leaders. The existence of the rural wealth-leader is able to embed the scattered and independent poor households into the industrial projects of leading enterprises and powerful families to share the benefits of the whole industrial chain. We have embarked on a new path of relying on the rural wealth-leaders to guide poor households in increasing their incomes, steadily lifting them out of poverty and preventing them from falling back into poverty.

After the completion of the poverty, the target mission is completed, the five-year transition period is set up from the day of the poverty, and do it to help the horse. As one of the “Ten targeted Poverty Alleviation projects in China”, the Rural Wealth-Leader program has played an important role in poverty alleviation, and will continue to play its role in stabilizing poverty and benefiting poverty, increasing household income and revitalizing rural industries during the transition period.

The rural wealth-leader refers to the production and operation of planting, aquaculture, agricultural product processing and agricultural product marketing, labor output, and technology services in rural areas. They are outstanding talents in the development of rural economy. They are leaders in the income of farmers to increase rich. It is an excellent representative of rural advanced productive forces, which belongs to the elite group of rural areas. By June 2020, a total of 414,000 rural wealth-leaders had been selected, nearly 320,000 people had been trained, 3 people had been trained in each village, and more than 210,000 businesses with poor people had been established, helping more than 4 million poor people to increase their incomes.

As an important endogenous development vitality at the rural grass-roots level, the rural wealth-leader is an important port connecting social capital and dispersed rural households. It can give play to the cohesion of the grass-roots level, improve the mechanism of poverty alleviation, integrate poor people into the industrial chain, and continuously drive the income of poor households. The ability defect of individual farmers as market subjects in China leads to the system fault between small production and large market, and the market competition ability is very fragile. When the relationship with external organizations occurs, it can only be carried out in the way of individual to group, and the asymmetry of the two forces makes the interests of farmers vulnerable. In order to organize farmers, it is necessary to have able rural people to organize and convene. Therefore, it is very important to cultivate leaders and conveners that farmers need in the process of rural development. As knowledgeable, capable and courageous representatives of rural society, rural elites play an irreplaceable role in rural development [1]. However, at the same time, the large-scale rural elite flow and reform and opening up and the strengthening of market economic factors effect on the society as a whole company, shows the characteristics of a kind of typical unidimensional loss, caused the lack of the development of Chinese rural elite talent, led to the development of rural production advantages to the lack of labor force and rural revitalization of the backbone of the void [2,3,4]. As new representatives of local rural elites, the rural wealth-leaders can integrate rural development elements with their own capital and technology advantages, and drive farmers to participate in market-oriented operation and achieve common development [4].

Existing studies on rural elites and farmers’ poverty reduction had accumulated considerable accumulation in rural operation, rural governance, and the role and mechanism of rural operation. However, there are some shortcomings. In terms of research content, researches on rural elites’ contribution to poverty reduction of rural households mostly focus on poverty reduction results and lack of systematic sorting of action paths. In addition, there are few researches on the impact of rural elites’ individual heterogeneity on poverty reduction effect. In terms of research methods, case analysis is the main method, but case analysis has the problem of sample selection bias due to the small sample size. Due to the limitation of the minimum sample size, the empirical analysis can overcome sample selection bias to some extent, but the existing studies lack a detailed decomposition of the characteristics of the rural wealth-leader. This paper systematically analyzes the rural wealth-leader’s path of linking agriculture with agriculture, and verifies the impact of key individual characteristics on poverty reduction through empirical analysis using the survey data of 21 counties in 7 provinces in China.

2. Theoretical Analysis and Research Hypothesis

2.1. Mechanism of the Rural Wealth-Leader to Increase the Income of Poor Farmers

The rural wealth-leaders play an important role in development-oriented poverty alleviation. The course of poverty alleviation in China has experienced a major change from the bottom-helping type to the development-helping type, and from the blood-transfusion type to the blood-generating type. In development-oriented poverty alleviation, although poor ordinary villagers are eager to achieve economic growth, it is difficult for the government to directly activate these groups. Instead, it is necessary to let the elite group, which is easier to undertake projects, serve as an intermediary to promote development-oriented poverty alleviation to benefit ordinary villagers through the “government-elitist-ordinary villagers” chain. Development-oriented poverty alleviation projects cannot bypass elites. Targeted poverty alleviation requires high-quality elites and perfect governance of rural elites [5]. With the flow to the rural poverty alleviation resources, poverty can be based on the gap between rich and poor sorting out type transfer of benefits to the poor, but difficult to development-oriented poverty reduction in the government directly activated the livelihood of poor families will, must by the ability of country artist a mediation, form a “government-artist-poor” chain, make the project exert hematopoietic benefits, thus benefit the poor [6].

The rural wealth-leaders’ influence on farmers’ income is bidirectional, with “altruism” as the main factor. In the process of development-oriented poverty alleviation, the rural wealth-leaders, as an important part of the rural elite, are characterized by “profit-seeking” (Figure 1). They complete production accumulation through independent operation and “elite capture”, and can obtain more resources through “elite capture”. The institutional elite, social elite and economic elite form an interest alliance to jointly monopolize resources for the countryside and the space for village public interests brought by rural economic development [7,8,9]. “Elite capture” leads to the deviation of the goal of financial poverty alleviation projects [10,11], which tends to lead to the crowding out of small farmers and poor farmers in the case of limited resources. In addition, the rural wealth-leaders have significant “altruism” characteristics, and their social capital plays an alternative role in the supply of formal institutions. The rural wealth-leaders’ industries are localized and form a community of interests with local capital and labor, thus possessing the motivation of “altruism”. Meanwhile, the rural wealth-leaders are those who have deep feelings for the countryside and have a strong sense of dedication. The good operation of rural cooperative economic organizations largely depends on the social capital of rural elites. The altruistic behavior of the rural wealth-leaders who share social capital within the organization is out of the need to seek more cooperative surplus, seek recognition and reproduce social capital. Under the institutional model dominated by rural elites, when the income is insufficient to cover the cost, the income of poor farmers can be guaranteed [11,12]. Even when production accumulation is weak, the rural wealth-leader can still choose poverty alleviation projects and include poor households into industrial projects [13].

The altruism of the rural wealth-leaders is mainly manifested in the rural alliance with farmers, which is realized through three paths. First of all, the rural wealth-leader realizes the connection between farmers’ small-scale production and the big market, and plays an intermediary role in connecting the market. Through the organization and farmer professional associations, scattered farmers are organized to form economies of scale, reduce production and sales costs, expand product sales space, enhance the ability to resist market risks, avoid disorderly competition among scattered farmers, and improve the bargaining power of farmers [14,15]. Secondly, the rural wealth-leader plays the triple roles of promoters of village development, mediators of village conflicts and shapers of village discourse. They can integrate members’ individual rationality through the forms of resource injection, information transmission, institutional constraints, norms of etiquette and customs, and examples and demonstrations. Promote the integration of village resources [16]. As representatives of rural policies, technologies and funds, the rural wealth-leaders play an important role in promoting new technologies, new products, providing new information and supporting funds. Through demonstration and guidance, in the form of “one household leads to ten households, ten households lead to one village, and one village leads to one industry”, it promotes the dissemination of new technologies and the adjustment and optimization of employment structure [17]. Finally, the rural wealth-leaders play the role of knowledge incubation, realizing the incubation of knowledge (agricultural production technology, sales, etc.) in the form of “spreading, helping and guiding”, and gradually cultivating a group of new farmers who are literate, skilled and good at management [18]. Thus, the knowledge and skills of poor farmers are improved, and these newly hatched new farmers have the opportunity to be further transformed into the rural wealth-leaders, thus forming a virtuous cycle.

2.2. The Influence Mechanism of Individual Characteristics on the Poverty Reduction Effect of the Rural Wealth-Leader

In the process of participating in rural revitalization, the will, behavior and effect of the rural wealth-leaders will be affected by the main factors and situational factors. Among them, the subject quality will affect the actual effect of the united Agricultural belt through the logical process of “motivation, action and performance” (Figure 2). To be specific, factors such as the subject cognition and ability quality of the rural wealth-leader will affect the direction and intensity of the role of the rural wealth-leader. The participation of economic participation system will affect the industrial development and rural governance in rural areas, thus affecting the industrial development of the rural wealth-leader and the income increase path for poor farmers, and then affecting the poverty reduction effect. Among them, the individual characteristics of the rural wealth-leader will be an important regulating variable of poverty reduction.

Rural situation factors and other factors can influence the poverty reduction effect of the rural wealth-leader to a certain extent, but individual factors are the key to affect the poverty reduction effect. There are significant differences in the intrinsic motivation and actions of different types of the rural wealth-leader. From the perspective of categories, the key individual characteristics that affect the poverty reduction effect mainly include four aspects: (1) the personal quality of the rural wealth-leader; (2) the industry in which the rural wealth-leaders work; (3) the role of the rural wealth-leader in villages; (4) the degree of localization of the rural wealth-leaders. These variables all affect the path of poverty reduction by influencing their economic participation and institutional participation, and thus affect the effect of poverty reduction.

(1)

The personal qualities of the rural wealth-leader

The individual quality of the rural wealth-leaders includes two factors: education and education level and rural industrial skills. Generally speaking, individuals with higher education and education have faster learning ability and higher production management skills, can also complete the original accumulation of rural society faster, improve the industrialization level of rural industry, and become the key intermediary between individual farmers and the market. The higher the skill level of the rural industry, the demonstration and knowledge incubation of the rural industry development can be more obvious.

(2)

The job category of the rural wealth-leader

The industry the rural wealth-leader works in has a direct impact on the mediating role of poverty reduction. Poor villages are generally limited by geographical factors and other objective natural factors, and are far away from the market, facing the bottleneck of supply and demand. Traditional agricultural breeding industry and agricultural product sales industry cannot fundamentally solve the communication cost and transportation cost between supply and demand, so it has little impact on the industrial development of poor villages. When the market size remains unchanged, the rural wealth-leaders engaged in traditional industries have little industry scale and market intermediary effect, and their ability to reduce poverty is limited. Electronic commerce broke a rural industrial chain and supply chain line, implements the external resources into poor areas and the reshaping of the industry supply and demand, in rural integrated industry chain and value chain at the same time, realize the industrial cluster and the coordination of the village, and to make more a lack of means of production and sales channels poor peasant households to participate in the enterprise production operation [19,20].

(3)

The role of the rural wealth-leader in the village

According to Weber’s “Trinity” stratification theory, the rural wealth-leaders can be roughly divided into three categories: political elites who control the main power of the village, economic elites represented by “able people” and “rich people”, and social elites who occupy the advantages of resources and information. Among them, the rural political elite, namely the institutional elite, refers to the cadres and members of the village “two committees” with official power in the village. As the direct agent of rural governance, this kind of elite is the key to connect farmers and the government, and changes freely in the role of “protective” and “profit-oriented” national economic man. With the development of rural areas, rural political elites have gradually become the key force to promote rural economic and social development under the new situation, with obvious “demonstration” effect or “able man” driving effect [21,22]. Economic elite refers to rural elite entrepreneurs, large is an advantage position in the economy, such as groups, the groups are mostly have mind, have the ability to “wise men” or resources, the relationship between the “rich”, using its own technology and primitive accumulation of capital, social resources, with the aid of new technology to improve its wealth accumulation, such as the Internet, It also drives surrounding farmers out of poverty [23]. Meanwhile, village governance by the rich can significantly improve the supply of rural public goods and reduce the agricultural production costs of poor farmers [24]. Social elite refers to the people with high reputation in the village or community, including the political elite and the economic elite.

The three types of rural wealth-leaders have significant differences in their behavior characteristics and resource acquisition methods, and their role of linking agriculture with agriculture is different to some extent. Political elites among the rural wealth-leaders have higher altruism characteristics, and are the key to connect government policies with ordinary farmers. Since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the CPC Central Committee has proposed and vigorously promoted the innovative institutional design of “one party secretary at the same time”, which aims to ensure the core leadership status of village party organizations and provide a strong organizational guarantee for rural revitalization and governance [25]. Moreover, different from the economic and social elites, the political elites have higher social and administrative characteristics in governing villages. The resource endowment of the rural elites themselves, the relationship structure between trust resources within the village community and rural reciprocity constitute the ability to drive farmers out of poverty. Therefore, the political elite with party members as the main group of the united farmers belt will be more obvious and the effect.

(4)

The degree of localization of the rural wealth-leader

The degree of localization of the rural wealth-leaders is another key factor affecting their economic and institutional participation. The flow of labor force through institutionalized approaches such as “education, college admission and employment” has objectively caused the shrinkage of rural elite groups, which are facing the dilemma of intergenerational replacement. In the traditional process of rural development and governance, the elite group that plays a key role is endogenous. The rural wealth-leaders, who grow up in rural areas and gain elite status based on rural economy, have more comparative advantages in accurately understanding the needs of poor groups, accurately selecting and cultivating industries. By accurately selecting industries, the rural elites grasp the new economic model keenly. In addition to obtaining opportunities for self-development, they also have a good performance in promoting the development of poor households [17]. Rural elite in rural revitalization of institutional structure, economic rationality, culture, discipline, technical change, the influence of such factors as social transformation, to build rural elite in rural revitalization of the implementation of the path from inside the rural community should not only pay attention to the selection, which should pay attention to introduce the rural community walk out of talent [26]. Open “the present” and “absent” rural elite has certain necessity, but “not present” rural elite to participate in the process of rural governance, with rural production and rural governance has certain distance, it’s the attribute characteristics of localization is a kind of external capital import feature, and the integration of local sex is not high, which will affect the effect of poverty reduction.

2.3. The Research Hypothesis

Based on the above analysis, the following hypotheses are proposed:

H1. 

The rural wealth-leader has a significant impact on farmers’ poverty reduction.

H2. 

The rural wealth-leaders who are highly educated and skilled have a more significant effect on poverty reduction.

H3. 

Different types of the rural wealth-leaders have different impacts on the increase of farmers’ income, among which the political elite, mainly party members, has a more obvious impact.

H4. 

The degree of localization of the rural wealth-leader has a greater impact on farmers’ income. The higher the degree of localization is, the more obvious the effect of poverty reduction is.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Data Source

The data in this paper are collected from the research team. In order to ensure the representativeness of the sample, the research team analyzed the number of poor villages nationwide and the rural wealth-leaders in the early stage. Seven provinces, Anhui, Henan, Yunnan, Guangxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and Hunan, which have a large number of poor villages and the rural wealth-leaders, are selected as the research provinces. The rural leaders will be selected from these seven provinces Wealth-leader) a large number of 20 cities and counties (districts), including Lancang, Xundian, Mengla, Jinghong, Simao, Lingui, Gongcheng, Yangshuo, Guanyang, Long ‘an, Xincai, Pingyu, Gushi, Xinxian, Jing, Jixi, Tongchuan, Maiji, Gangu and Nanjing, were selected as the research districts and counties. In the selected 20 districts and counties, questionnaires and interviews were conducted among the prominent rural wealth-leaders, mentors of the rural wealth-leaders, and county (district) level government managers.

After recycling by the research group, a total of 172 valid questionnaires were collected after removing invalid samples and some missing variables. Among them, 11 were in Anhui province, 21 in Henan province, 61 in Yunnan Province, 39 in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, 19 in Shaanxi Province, 20 in Gansu Province and 1 in Jiangsu Province.

3.2. Variable Selection

(1)

Explained Variable

The explained variable is the key variable to measure poverty reduction and income increase of rural households, and the poverty reduction effect of the rural wealth-leader is measured by two indicators, income and ratio, respectively.

(2)

Core explanatory variable

The core explanatory variable is the individual characteristic variable that affects the poverty reduction effect of the rural wealth-leader. Including the personal qualities of the rural wealth-leader, the industry in which the leader is engaged, and the rural leader The role of wealth-leader in villages and the localization degree of the rural wealth-leader.

Among them, personal quality is represented by education and education level and skills, which are represented as EDU and TEC, respectively. The industries engaged in by the rural wealth-leader use 0-1 variable representation. Compared with other industries, rural e-commerce not only promotes the revitalization of rural economy, but also objectively creates conditions for the formation and development of rural communities, and plays a role in shaping and reconstructing rural communities [27], based on this, this paper sets it as 1 when engaged in e-commerce industry, otherwise it is 0, indicating ecom. The role of the rural wealth-leader in the village is measured by the political status of the political elite. If the leader is a party member, it is equal to 1; otherwise, it is 0, and is represented as pm. The localization degree of the rural wealth-leader is represented by 0–1 variable, which is 1 when it is in the village; otherwise, it is 0, which is represented by scope.

(3)

Control variables

In the selection of control variables, the basic situation of individuals, the operation of enterprises and the benefit connection with farmers are selected as the control variables. Among them, other personal basic information includes gender and age two variables. The operating situation of the enterprise is represented by the source of funds, profits and loan applications of the enterprise. The benefit connection with the farmer is expressed by the term of the contract signed with the farmer. It should be pointed out that, although the distance of the country to the city may affect the livelihood of farmers, but in the process of rural poverty alleviation and the revitalization of China, the country’s transport has been greatly improved, and with the improvement of rural communication equipment, the distance between urban and rural areas and difference have been greatly decreases, and the geographical location between rural difference is small. Therefore, this paper does not include rural-urban distance into control variables.

3.3. Descriptive Statistical Analysis of Variables

From the descriptive statistical analysis of variables, it can be seen that the rural wealth-leaders have a better poverty reduction effect (

Table 1. Variable Descriptive Statistical Analysis Table.

Variable Category	Variables	Variable Expression	Mean	Standard Deviation	Minimum	Maximum
Dependent Variable	income	The monthly increase in income of poor peasant households	3.35	1.30	0	5
	ratio	Poverty reduction ratio	3.71	1.41	0	5
Explanatory Variables	edu	Education level	11.39	3.47	0	19
	tec	Whether have skills	0.28	0.45	0	1
	ecom	Whether engaged in e-commerce or Internet marketing	0.12	0.32	0	1
	pm	Communist Party member or not	0.54	0.50	0	1
	scope	Degree of localization	0.22	0.41	0	1
Personal Particulars	age	Age	41.41	9.06	19	66
	gender	Gender	0.88	0.33	0	1
Enterprise Operation	person	Whether startup capital comes from individuals	0.65	0.48	0	1
	relative	Whether the start-up capital comes from friends and relatives	0.22	0.41	0	1
	bank	Whether the startup recently originated from a bank loan	0.61	0.49	0	1
	shareholder	Whether the venture capital comes from the partner	0.31	0.46	0	1
	profit	Corporate profit	2.23	1.60	0	7
	loan	Loan application status of enterprises	1.48	1.52	0	4
Interest Connection With Farmers	contract	Contract term	1.21	0.93	0	3

). The sample has a high proportion of Party members and a low degree of localization. They are mainly male, with an average age of 41.41. The average contract signed with farmers was 1.21 years.

3.4. Model Setting

In order to evaluate the impact of the individual characteristics of the rural wealth-leader on poverty reduction, refer to existing literature [9,14], we constructed the following model:

$$Y={\beta }_0+{\beta }_1{x}_1+{\beta }_2{x}_2+{\beta }_3{x}_3+{\beta }_4{x}_4+{\beta }_5{x}_5+{\displaystyle \sum _1^n{\varphi }_n{z}_n}+\epsilon$$

(1)

where, the dependent variable $Y$ represents the variable of poverty reduction effect. In this paper, the income of farmers and the proportion of poverty alleviation are the explanatory variables. $x_1\cdots x_5$ is the explanatory variable, where they are education level, skills, e-commerce or Internet marketing, party member status and localization degree, respectively. $z_n$ is the control variable, and $\epsilon$ is the random error term. $\beta$ and $\varphi$ are the corresponding coefficients.

4. Results

4.1. Poverty Reduction Effect

When analyzing the poverty reduction effect of the rural wealth-leader, longitudinal comparison or regression cannot be used to represent the poverty reduction effect due to the cross-sectional data. In order to more intuitively display the poverty reduction and income increase effect, quantile is used to represent the actual effect characteristics of poverty reduction. As can be seen from the box chart in Figure 3, the quota ranges that drive the monthly income increase of poor households are concentrated in the second range (200–500 RMB, Chinese monetary unit) and the fourth range (1000–2000 RMB), and the proportion of the impoverished population that drive them out of poverty is mainly in the third range (50–80%) and the fifth range (100%). It shows that the rural wealth-leader has an obvious effect on driving farmers out of poverty and increasing incomes, thus Hypothesis 1 is verified.

4.2. Poverty Reduction Effect of Farmers

In order to explore the impact of individual characteristics of the rural wealth-leader on the effect of rural poverty reduction, major individual characteristic variables were included in the model analysis as core explanatory variables, and linear regression model was adopted to analyze the model. After eliminating insignificant variables, the following model analysis results were obtained:

The analysis results in

Table 2. Model regression results.

	(1)	(2)
	Income	Ratio
edu	0.071 **
	(2.210)
tec		0.781 ***
		(3.480)
pm		0.419 **
		(2.008)
ecom	0.557 *
	(1.781)
R2	0.134	0.164
adj. R2	0.072	0.099

* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

are divided into two parts. Among them, it can be seen that the educational level of the rural wealth-leader and the participation in e-commerce significantly increase the income of poor farmers. Among them, the educational level is significant at the significance level of 5%. Whether or not to engage in e-commerce was significant at the significance level of 10%, and the coefficient reached 0.557. It can be seen from the proportion of households lifted out of poverty that the rural wealth-leaders with skills and party membership can lift a higher proportion of poor households out of poverty. Among them, whether any technology is significant at the 1% significance level, and party membership is significant at the 5% significance level. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 3 are tested.

4.3. Influence Mechanism Analysis

In order to explore the critical path of the influence of individual characteristics, the cross variables of each explanatory variable and other variables were further included in the model analysis to obtain the regression results as shown in

Table 3. Regression results of the model.

	(3)	(4)
	Income	Income
edu	0.121 ***
	(2.735)
ecom		2.084 ***
		(3.433)
loan	0.493 **
	(2.326)
edu_loan	0.029 *
	(1.663)
profit		0.374 ***
		(5.785)
e_profit		0.578 ***
		(3.061)
R2	0.164	0.297
adj. R2	0.099	0.236

* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

. Since the cross terms have no significant effect on the proportion of poverty alleviation, the model analysis results only show the part that has significant effect on income. Among them, the interaction term of education and loan has significant effect on farmers’ income increase at the significance level of 10%, but the coefficient is negative, indicating that the impact of education on farmers’ income is affected by the amount of enterprise loan, which may be because the rural wealth-leader with higher education level has higher original capital accumulation. So the less likely they are to borrow. In the e-commerce industry and corporate profits are significant under 1% significance level, but the interaction term negative significant under 1% significance level, show that e-commerce impact on farmers’ income is affected by the corporate profits, the improvement of corporate profits to poverty reduction effect exists negative impact of electronic commerce, this may be due to corporate profits increase, the profit distribution process of electronic commerce gradually marginalizes farmers.

5. Conclusions and Policy Suggestions

5.1. Conclusions

The rural wealth-leader is one of the “Ten targeted Poverty Alleviation projects” and the “leader goose” for poverty alleviation and income increase in poor villages. However, the analysis of poverty reduction path and key individual characteristics of the rural wealth-leader is insufficient in existing studies. Based on the survey data of the Rural wealth-leader in 21 counties of 10 cities across China, this paper systematically analyzes the path of the rural wealth-leader in poverty reduction and income increase of poor farmers, and combs out the influence ways of key individual characteristics. Data visualization and empirical model were used to verify the hypothesis and analyze the mechanism of the impact of individual characteristics on farmers’ poverty reduction. The results show that:

First, the rural wealth-leader has a significant effect on increasing farmers’ income and eliminating poverty. It can increase the monthly income of most farmers by 200–400 RMB.

Second, the rural wealth-leaders with high education level and engaged in e-commerce have a significant positive increase in household income. The level of education and education was significant at the level of 5%, and the level of e-commerce was significant at the level of 10%.

Third, Party members and the skilled rural wealth-leaders have a significant positive impact on poverty alleviation.

Fourth, the income increasing effect of culture and education is negatively affected by corporate loans, and the income increasing effect of e-commerce is negatively affected by corporate profits.

5.2. Policy Suggestions

Based on the above research conclusions, combined with the individual characteristics of the rural wealth-leader, in order to better play the role of the rural wealth-leader in stabilizing poverty and benefiting poverty, increasing income of low-income farmers and revitalizing rural industries during the transition period, the following policy inspirations are obtained in this paper.

First of all, efforts should be made to train the rural wealth-leaders in various forms, encourage external elites and internal rural managers to participate in rural development, and reconstruct the network and order of rural development.

Secondly, we should make full use of e-commerce to break down the information barriers in poor villages and improve the participation of poor farmers. At the same time, the profit distribution method of e-commerce related enterprises should be improved to avoid farmers being marginalized in the process of e-commerce development.

Finally, various forms of training should be carried out for the rural wealth-leaders, and supporting fiscal, financial and tax policies should be made to improve their production, management and financial acquisition capabilities.