The Impact of the Digital Economy on High-Quality Development of Specialized Farmers’ Cooperatives: Evidence from China

Abstract

The development of the digital economy is profoundly changing and influencing the development mode of specialized farmers’ cooperatives. It can promote the development of specialized farmers’ cooperatives by optimizing resource allocation, improving production efficiency, and enhancing their external service and internal governance capacity. This paper used the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces and cities from 2017 to 2020 and applied various statistical analysis methods to investigate the role of the digital economy in promoting agricultural cooperatives and their internal mechanisms. The results show the following: (1) The development of specialized farmers’ cooperatives was slightly improved in China over the studied years. Cooperatives in the eastern areas had the highest development levels, and there was a marked increase in the development of cooperatives in western regions in these years. (2) The digital economy can effectively enhance the technological innovation level and then boost the high-quality development of agricultural cooperatives. (3) The results of the threshold regression analysis show that there is only one threshold for the impact of digitalization on the development of farmers’ cooperatives. (4) By analyzing the data from these regions, we found that digitalization can foster the development of rural cooperatives not only in specific regions, but also in surrounding areas. (5) The heterogeneity analysis showed that the promoting effect of digitalization on specialized farmers’ cooperatives was more evident in the west of China than in the eastern and central regions. Therefore, this paper provides a reference for accelerating the development of specialized farmers’ cooperatives under the background of the digital economy.