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Poverty alleviation through e-commerce: Village involvement and demonstration policies in rural China
- Source :
- Journal of Integrative Agriculture, Vol 20, Iss 4, Pp 998-1011 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Elsevier, 2021.
-
Abstract
- The diffusion of e-commerce has played a significant role in recent rural economic development in China. E-commerce is also considered as an efficient channel to alleviate poverty in rural China. Voluminous studies have investigated the contribution of e-commerce to agricultural development, yet it is lacking empirical evidence as to the effects of e-commerce on rural poverty alleviation. Since the year of 2014, in order to develop rural e-commerce, Chinese government launched the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Project. This gradual involvement policy offered a natural experiment for evaluation of e-commerce. Based on village-level survey data from rural China and Heckit method, our study finds that rural e-commerce has a significantly positive effect on rural income. Moreover, the effect is inverted U-shaped for the relative-poverty villages. The estimation of the propensity scores matching model confirms that the results are robust. The following policy recommendations are proposed: (1) policy support to rural e-commerce should prioritize the poverty-stricken villages. By doing so, the marginal income effects of e-commerce will be maximized. (2) Investment in internet infrastructure and establishment of human resources for e-commerce in rural areas will have spillover effects, increasing rural income through the “digital dividend”.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20953119
- Volume :
- 20
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- Directory of Open Access Journals
- Journal :
- Journal of Integrative Agriculture
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- edsdoj.9fd56a5670ec4d2baad5d46bbebaf015
- Document Type :
- article
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/S2095-3119(20)63422-0