Impact of smartphone use on production outsourcing: evidence from litchi farming in southern China

Abstract

There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that information and communication technology (ICT) and agricultural production outsourcing can improve farm productivity and farmers’ welfare. However, less is known about the relationship between modern ICT use and agricultural production outsourcing. Drawing upon a survey of 855 litchi growers from southern China, this study estimates the effect of smartphone use on farmers’ decisions regarding agricultural production outsourcing. A novel genetic matching method is employed to mitigate the selection bias associated with self-selected smartphone use. Our result confirms the positive role of smartphone use in increasing the number of production tasks outsourced by litchi growers. Moreover, smartphone users are more likely to outsource both labor-intensive and technology-intensive tasks than nonusers. In addition, the treatment effect of smartphone use varies with each specific litchi production task. Our findings highlight the importance of improving smartphone adoption among farmers to promote agricultural production outsourcing.