Research on the Efficiency Measurement and Spatial Spillover Effect of China’s Regional E-Commerce Poverty Alleviation from the Perspective of Sustainable Development

Abstract

The development of e-commerce plays a very important role in changing the production and operation mode, optimizing the allocation of market resources, promoting sustainable development, and ultimately achieving the goal of e-commerce poverty alleviation. Therefore, the efficiency of e-commerce poverty alleviation has become a focus of attention for both the government and academia. The authors of this paper selected the panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2010 to 2021, in order to measure the poverty alleviation efficiency of e-commerce in each province and city. We used the Moran’s I index to measure its spatial correlation to verify the existence of its spatial effect; we then used the spatial Durbin model to analyze the spatial spillover effect in the efficiency of e-commerce poverty alleviation. The conclusions are as follows: First, there is a significant positive spatial correlation of the efficiency of e-commerce poverty alleviation among different regions in China. Moran’s I index exceeds 0.5, indicating that there is a significant spatial effect in the efficiency of e-commerce poverty alleviation, and the existence of its spatial effect is unavoidable in the empirical analysis. Secondly, from the perspective of the efficiency of e-commerce poverty alleviation in various regions of the country, the overall e-commerce poverty alleviation efficiency is not high, and there are large differences among regions. The regions in which efficiency is higher include Tianjin, Beijing, and Shanghai. Regionally, the highest are in the east and the lowest are in the west. Secondly, from the decomposition of spatial spillover effects, the direct effects of each influencing factor are all positive. Only the financial development environment is less significant, and the indirect effects indicate that only four indicators have significant spatial spillover effects, of which the most significant is industrial agglomeration. The level of industrial agglomeration is not significantly related to the level of human capital, and there is a negative correlation between it and the efficiency of e-commerce poverty alleviation. The authors studied the poverty alleviation efficiency and spatial spillover effect of China’s regional e-commerce from the perspective of sustainable development, which is beneficial to China’s regional poverty alleviation results, providing practical guidance and decision-making reference for implementing differentiated coping strategies in different regions. The research complements, improves, and expands the research content in this field.