Research on the Impact of Internet Use on Farmers’ Adoption of Agricultural Socialized Services

Abstract

Developing agricultural socialized services is of great significance for promoting agricultural sustainable development and ensuring food security. The use of the Internet provides new opportunities to promote the development of agricultural socialized services. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in 2016 and 2018 with 8850 observations, this paper investigates the effects of Internet use on farmers’ adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural socialized services, and explores the mediating effect of social networks. The adoption of agricultural socialized services is divided into adoption decision and adoption degree, and the Probit model and Tobit model are used for empirical analysis. The results showed that: (1) Internet use has a significant positive impact on both the adoption decision and the adoption degree of agricultural socialized services. Specifically, the impact of Internet use on the adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural machinery services is greater than that of agricultural hired labor services. (2) The mechanism analysis found that social networks partially mediated the effect of Internet use on farmers’ adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural socialized services. Furthermore, social networks have a greater mediating effect on the influence of Internet use on farmers’ adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural machinery services compared to agricultural hired labor services. (3) The heterogeneity test found that Internet use has no significant impact on the adoption of agricultural socialized services by older farmers and farmers with a low education level. Therefore, it is crucial to fully leverage the potential of the Internet to facilitate the supply and demand of agricultural socialized services. Moreover, it is essential to integrate the market of agricultural socialized services with the rural social network to realize the synergy of “Internet plus social network”. This integration facilitates the organic connection between small farmers and modern agricultural development.