Examining Whether Participation in Industrial Integration Can Enhance Farmers’ Income Based on Empirical Evidence from the “Hundred Villages and Thousand Households” Survey in Jiangxi Province

Against the backdrop of China’s Rural Revitalization Strategy, rural industrial integration is regarded as a critical pathway to boosting farmers’ income, yet its specific impact and heterogeneous characteristics remain to be explored. Using biennial panel data from the 2021 and 2023 “Hundred Villages and Thousand Households” survey in Jiangxi Province, this study employs two-way fixed effects models, the instrumental variable method, and quantile regression to investigate the effect of farmers’ participation in rural industrial integration on their income. The findings show that participation in industrial integration significantly increases household income by an average of 28.6%, with causal relationships confirmed by instrumental variable analysis. Among different integration modes, industrial chain extension has the most significant effect, followed by functional expansion and internal multi-format integration, while technology penetration shows no significant effect; overlapping multiple modes exhibits a negative interactive effect. Additionally, high-standard farmland construction amplifies the income-increasing effect, and the effect is more pronounced for low-income farmers, those in mountainous areas, and farmers in the Central Jiangxi region. This study provides micro-level empirical evidence for optimizing industrial integration policies and advancing rural revitalization in central and western agricultural provinces.