The Impact of Informal Learning on Herders’ Operating Income: An Analysis Based on Human Capital Differences

Abstract

Improving the operating income of farmers and herdsmen is an important starting point for achieving common prosperity. As a common form of learning and an important source of skills training, informal learning has a certain impact on the economy and income level of farmers and herdsmen. This paper takes 439 herdsmen in three cities of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region as the research object and tries to explore the comprehensive influence, subdivision difference, and mechanism of informal learning on the operating income of herdsmen on the theoretical and empirical levels. The results show that the impact of informal learning on the operating income of herdsmen is “inverted U-shaped”, and there is an informal learning balance point of 2.9776 h, which maximizes the effect of informal learning on the increased operating income of herdsmen. After using the instrumental variable method to deal with endogeneity and conducting robustness tests through winsorizing, quantile regression, and substitution variables, the research conclusions were still valid. Heterogeneity analysis found that informal learning has a significant impact on the increase in operating income of herdsmen in the low human capital group, reflecting the role of “sending charcoal in the snow”. However, it has no significant effect on the increase in operating income of herdsmen in the high human capital group, and the effect of “icing on the cake” is not obvious. In view of this result, government departments should speed up the planning of Internet infrastructure construction in pastoral areas, and accurately push the knowledge and skills needs of herdsmen to help increase the operating income of herdsmen.