Can rural e-commerce service centers improve farmers’ subject well-being? A new practice of ‘internet plus rural public services’ from China

• Published in: The international food and agribusiness management review Vol. 23; no. 5; pp. 681 - 696
• Main Authors: Jin, Hui, Li, Lili, Qian, Xinyi, Zeng, Yiwu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Netherlands Brill | Wageningen Academic 01.01.2020; Wageningen Academic Publishers
• Subjects: RESEARCH ARTICLE; propensity score matching; rural public services; China; subjective well-being; rural e-commerce
• ISSN: 1559-2448; 1096-7508; 1559-2448
• DOI: 10.22434/IFAMR2019.0217

Whether farmers live happily or not matters a nation’s harmony and stability. Recently, a large number of rural e-commerce service centers (RESC) have been emerged in rural China. RESC provide some convenient services for local residents, such as agent purchase, sales, and payment online. This paper devotes to empirically analyzing the impact of RESC on farmers’ subjective well-being (SWB) with the method of propensity score matching based on the survey data collected from the first pilot city of Alibaba’s RESC project – Tonglu County, Zhejiang Province. It is confirmed that RESC can significantly improve farmers’ SWB, which not only provides an empirical evidence for the further development of RESC, but also reveals that RESC is a beneficial practice for local governments to utilize the internet to improve farmers’ welfare. It also has a positive exemplary significance for ‘internet plus rural public services’.