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<p>Existing studies emphasize rural e-commerce’s impact on agricultural consumption but neglect its direct production effects. This paper first outlines the historical development of agricultural mechanization and e-commerce in China.Using a county-level panel dataset covering 1321 counties from 2011 to 2020 and leveraging the E-Commerce Demonstration Counties policy as a quasi-natural experiment, our difference-in-differences estimates show that rural e-commerce adoption significantly boosts agricultural mechanization. These findings withstand rigorous robustness checks, including IV estimation using historical newspaper office locations during the Late Qing Dynasty and Republican era as an instrument. Mechanism analysis identifies three key channels: (1) increasing&#xa0;farmers’ income, (2) growing new agricultural entities (e.g., agribusiness firms and cooperatives), and (3) expanding operational scale. Most notably, we find that e-commerce fundamentally reshapes agricultural production by accelerating the transition from family farms to cooperative-based and large-scale farming operations. The study further reveals that e-commerce exerts a particularly strong positive effect on agricultural development in underdeveloped counties. These findings provide empirical support for promoting agricultural mechanization in the context of e-commerce development.</p>

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Rural E-Commerce and Agricultural Mechanization

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年5月27日

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  • Fei Lu,
  • Lu Yan

摘要

Existing studies emphasize rural e-commerce’s impact on agricultural consumption but neglect its direct production effects. This paper first outlines the historical development of agricultural mechanization and e-commerce in China.Using a county-level panel dataset covering 1321 counties from 2011 to 2020 and leveraging the E-Commerce Demonstration Counties policy as a quasi-natural experiment, our difference-in-differences estimates show that rural e-commerce adoption significantly boosts agricultural mechanization. These findings withstand rigorous robustness checks, including IV estimation using historical newspaper office locations during the Late Qing Dynasty and Republican era as an instrument. Mechanism analysis identifies three key channels: (1) increasing farmers’ income, (2) growing new agricultural entities (e.g., agribusiness firms and cooperatives), and (3) expanding operational scale. Most notably, we find that e-commerce fundamentally reshapes agricultural production by accelerating the transition from family farms to cooperative-based and large-scale farming operations. The study further reveals that e-commerce exerts a particularly strong positive effect on agricultural development in underdeveloped counties. These findings provide empirical support for promoting agricultural mechanization in the context of e-commerce development.