The Effect and Mechanism of Agricultural Informatization on Economic Development: Based on a Spatial Heterogeneity Perspective

Tian Tian,Jing Wang,Li Li

doi:10.3390/su14063165

Tian Tian, Jing Wang + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063165

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Abstract

As the future direction of modern agriculture, agricultural informatization (AI) and its economic effects are worth exploring because they can well promote digital agriculture. Based on the existing research results, we propose six hypotheses around the economic benefits of AI and construct the geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model with a sample of 30 Chinese provinces over the period 2001–2020 for validation. Specifically, starting from farmers’ income and regional economic growth, the entropy value method is used to construct the AI indicators, and the GTWR model is constructed to analyze the effect of AI. Furthermore, the transmission mechanism of AI was explored from the perspective of agricultural industry structure upgrading. The following conclusions were drawn. First, the level of AI in China has increased significantly, and meanwhile its spatial correlation has also strengthened year by year. Second, AI demonstrates a positive correlation with farmers’ income growth and regional economic development, which means that it has become an important contributing factor of rural economic output. Third, agricultural industry structure upgrading is one of the important ways for AI to leverage its economic effect. Hence, improving the informatization level in the rural and agricultural sectors through multi-dimensionality is of positive and pragmatic significance for the rural economy.

Highlights

The information revolution, which began in the 1940s and 1950s, has intensified in recent years, driving profound changes in agriculture and rural areas and forming many new industries and new forms and models of business
This study is innovative mainly in the following three aspects: (1) to address the lack of a comprehensive review of the economic effects of Agricultural informatization (AI), we look into the effects on farmers’ income growth and regional economic development respectively, to provide reliable evidence for the development of AI in China; (2) the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of AI is included in the study’s scope to bring the research results more in line with the development status quo and to improve the scientificity of the estimation results of the model; (3) from the perspective of upgrading the agricultural industry structure, the mediating effect model is applied to explore the mechanism of AI’s economic effects, which is conducive to a better understanding of the mechanism of AI
Since the data exhibit a certain spatial correlation and complexity in space, the interaction between the independent and dependent variables of the model may differ in different regions when constructing regression models, so it is necessary to take into account the influence of spatial factors in the study

Summary

Introduction

The information revolution, which began in the 1940s and 1950s, has intensified in recent years, driving profound changes in agriculture and rural areas and forming many new industries and new forms and models of business. Informatization has affected agriculture and many other industries [1]. Refers to the development and application of modern information technology in agriculture in a comprehensive manner, so that it penetrates into the whole process of agricultural production, market, consumption and all specific aspects of rural society, economy and technology. Apart from providing services for agriculture, AI has enhanced the value of agricultural information resources and has played an important role in narrowing the digital divide between urban and rural areas [2,3]. AI is an important direction for rural revitalization.

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