Impacts of Internet Information Literacy on Farmers’ Relative Poverty Vulnerability: Evidence from CGSS Survey Data in China

Alleviating the farmers’ relative poverty promotes social stability. Improving farmers’ Internet information literacy is an important measure to alleviate relative poverty in rural China by fostering farmers’ human capital human. From the perspective of future relative poverty, this paper uses the microdata from the Chinese General Social Survey and the Vulnerability as Expected poverty method to evaluate the farmers’ relative poverty vulnerability. The Tobit model was used to assess the effect of Internet information literacy on relative poverty vulnerability. The results still hold after utilizing the instrumental variable method, changing the dependent, core explanatory variables, and econometric models. The findings show that: (1) Internet information literacy significantly decreases farmers’ relative poverty vulnerability. (2) Heterogeneous analysis finds that Internet information literacy significantly negatively affects relative poverty vulnerability for low-educated, young, and middle-aged farmers. (3) Regarding mechanism, Internet information literacy mainly affects farmers’ relative poverty vulnerability through income, social networks, and off-farm work. Therefore, the findings suggest that the government should augment the farmers’ Internet information literacy to optimize farmers’ employment channels, social network levels, and income growth, thereby alleviating relative poverty.