Search Results (7)

The United Nations Organization states that well-being consists of universal goals and aspirations in human life throughout the world. The arrival of the digital age has a profound impact on humans’ way of production and life. While material living standards continue to improve, happiness has become the pursuit of social residents. Based on the theory of happiness economics, we use the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data to construct an Ordered Probit fixed-effect model and systematically investigate the dividend and disparities of digital literacy on rural residents’ subjective well-being in China, such as age, gender, region, education attainment, and so on. The results indicate that digital literacy significantly strengthens rural residents’ subjective well-being. Under the influence of digital literacy, subjective well-being is heterogeneous in individuals’ natural and social attributes. Further mechanism tests show that rural residents’ digital literacy strengthens subjective well-being through income generation, consumption upgrading, and social belonging effects. In consequence, the government should promote the construction of digital infrastructure, focus on the penetration and quality of digital technology, digital skill education and training, and guiding residents to utilize digital technology properly. Our study furthers the understanding of residents’ well-being and highlights digital literacy as a means to boost well-being, reduce regional development gaps, and support sustainable development. Full article

Many of the world’s less developed regions may not be able to improve the well-being of rural residents through agricultural revitalization because of their remoteness from agricultural markets. Using the county-level data set of China’s underdeveloped old revolutionary base areas from 2010 to 2021, this paper takes the policy planning of rural e-commerce as event intervention to investigate the driving role of the digital product market on agricultural economic development. Empirical results show that rural e-commerce planning policy has significantly promoted the agricultural added value of the pilot counties, and the digital market is the key driving factor of the agricultural economic growth in these underdeveloped areas. Both food production and livestock output have increased significantly as a result of e-commerce policies. Considering the potential bias of the bidirectional fixed effect estimators of staggered differences-in-differences (DID), this study uses heterogeneous robust estimators to verify the growth effect of the agricultural economy. Specifically, digital agricultural markets have significantly promoted agricultural mechanization and significantly improved agricultural total factor productivity. Moreover, empirical evidence does not support transmission mechanisms for off-farm employment and agricultural entrepreneurship. The findings can help less developed countries and regions develop policies to expand the agricultural markets with digital dividends, thereby promoting the development of the agricultural economy. Full article

Enhancing the livelihood resilience of livestock farmers in the old revolutionary base areas helps them to cope with the increasingly complex external risk shocks of recent years and promotes the sustainable development of regional agriculture. This study is based on survey data from 1047 livestock farmers in the Ningxia and Gansu provinces of the northwest old revolutionary base area. It incorporates the characteristics of livestock farmers and the elements of psychological capital into the sustainable livelihood analysis framework to construct a livelihood resilience index system. After measuring livelihood resilience, this paper uses a general linear regression model and a probit model to explore the impact and mechanism of digital literacy on the livelihood resilience of livestock farmers. The results show the following: (1) digital literacy has a significant positive effect on the livelihood resilience of livestock farmers, and the impact of different dimensions of digital literacy on different dimensions of livelihood resilience also varies. Additionally, this effect also shows the heterogeneity in different village clustering forms and different income groups. In areas inhabited by ethnic minorities and among moderate-income groups, the role of digital literacy on the livelihood resilience of livestock farmers is more significant. (2) The improvement of digital literacy has a significant positive impact on livelihood resilience through three different pathways: the “differential mode of association”, learning channels, and types of income. (3) Digital literacy has led to the psychological aspects of rural hollowing-out problems among livestock farmers, which is particularly evident in families with only one type of caregiving burden (either only left-behind elderly people or only left-behind children). This problem is more evident. Therefore, this paper poses that the advancement of agricultural and rural economic development in China should not only focus on the cultivation of farmers’ digital literacy but also accelerate the construction of digital infrastructure to ensure the long-term effective mechanism of improving digital literacy. At the same time, in the process of promoting digital rural areas, attention should be paid to the psychological isolation issues that the network era brings to farmers. Full article

The responsible low-carbon behavior of household residents is a crucial factor for the purpose of achieving carbon neutrality in the economy and society. Based on the peer effects theory, this study constructs a fixed-effects model to empirically analyze the existence, heterogeneity, and action mechanism of peer effects in household carbon emission behavior, which uses panel data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS). The results indicate that peer effects have a significantly positive impact on residents’ carbon emission behavior, and the results are verified by the robustness test in various ways. Further mechanism tests show that peer effects influence carbon emission behavior through methods including the learning imitation mechanism and competitive imitation mechanism. In addition, we find that peer effects have different impacts on residents’ carbon emission behavior in varying regions, income levels, education levels, and ages groups. This study aims to embed residents’ carbon emission behavior into the strong relationship between surrounding groups, raise consumers low-carbon awareness through publicity, guidance, and group interaction, form a low-carbon atmosphere for the whole society, and contribute to the realization of Sustainable Development Goals. Full article

With the growing trend of arable land abandonment, the potential threat to the security of the food supply has sparked public concern. In order to examine the impact of non-agricultural employment on food security, this study builds linear regression models for research based on panel data from counties in China’s old revolutionary base areas. The empirical results show that, although the impact of non-agricultural employment on total grain production is not significant, it has a significant negative impact on both area and productivity, which indicates that non-agricultural employment poses a challenge to food security. In addition, the study examines the potential benefits of non-farm employment on two aspects of food security, including intensive management and the increase of new business entities. Non-farm employment can also significantly promote intensive management, thereby reducing the food-security challenges brought by non-farm employment, while the benefits of new management entities are insignificant. These findings contribute to the optimization of economic policies related to agricultural development, including exploring land property rights reform systems to promote land transfer, strengthening labor quality improvement in the agricultural sector, and formulating supporting policies to stabilize non-agricultural employment in accordance with local conditions. Full article

Regional imbalance is a typical feature of economic and social development in China, and place-based policies aimed at promoting balanced regional development may bring challenges to low-carbon goals. This study uses the panel data of China’s prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2019 to investigate the impact of place-based policies on carbon emission efficiency using a quasi-experimental method. Results indicate that place-based policies significantly reduce the regional total-factor carbon emission efficiency. The difference-in-differences method based on propensity score matching and entropy balancing matching consistently supports the finding that carbon emission efficiency decreases after policy intervention. Place-based policies lead to a significant decline in capital allocation efficiency but have an insignificant impact on labor allocation efficiency. Moreover, place-based policies result in the expansion of carbon-intensive industries but hinder the progress of the financial technology of financial institutions. Nevertheless, place-based policies do not lead to the deterioration of environmental quality. Among the advantages of these policies are the significant promotion of regional digitization and increased fiscal expenditure on science and technology. Political promotion, carbon regulation, trade policies, and other conditional factors may be optimally designed to promote low-carbon development in the old revolutionary areas. Full article

Special functional areas and poor areas tend to spatially overlap, and poverty is a common feature of both. Special poor areas, taken as a kind of “policy space,” have attracted the interest of researchers and policymakers around the world. This study proposes a basic concept of special poor areas and uses this concept to develop a method to identify them. Poor counties in China are taken as the basic research unit and overlaps in spatial attributes including old revolutionary bases, borders, ecological degradation, and ethnic minorities, are used to identify special poor areas. The authors then analyze their basic quantitative structure and pattern of distribution to determine the geographical bases’ formation and development. The results show that 304 counties in China, covering a vast territory of 12 contiguous areas that contain a small population, are lagging behind the rest of the country. These areas are characterized by rich energy and resource endowments, important ecological functions, special historical status, and concentrated poverty. They are considered “special poor” for geographical reasons such as a relatively harsh natural geographical environment, remote location, deteriorating ecological environment, and an inadequate infrastructure network and public service system. Some areas suffer from underdevelopment and even lack the infrastructure for basic living. In order to prevent further deterioration of the economic, social, and ecological environments in these areas, targeted policies need to be implemented. Full article