Internet Use and the Poverty Vulnerability of Rural Households: From the Perspective of Risk Response

Abstract

Alleviating the poverty vulnerability of rural households helps to resist risk shocks and maintain livelihood security. From a risk-response-ability and -strategy perspective, this paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework for the impact of internet use on the poverty vulnerability of rural households using data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to conduct an empirical analysis. The results show that internet use has a significant impact on alleviating the poverty vulnerability of rural households. After a robustness test using the IV-probit two-step method, the results remained robust and reliable. When viewed from a regional perspective, the impact of internet use on the poverty vulnerability of rural households is reduced in the regions with a lower risk of poverty and higher use of the internet. An analysis of the influence mechanism shows that risk-response ability represented by human capital, social capital, and selfefficacy and risk-response strategy represented by nonagricultural employment and commercial insurance participation have a significant mediating effect between internet use and the poverty vulnerability of rural households. Therefore, based on improving network infrastructure, the government should guide rural households to improve their risk-response ability and implement risk-response strategies to prevent them from falling into poverty in the future.