The Impact of Internet Use on Production Efficiency of Animal Husbandry: Based on the Evidence of 340 Herdsmen in Inner Mongolia, China

Abstract

Production efficiency is a standard to evaluate the high-quality development of animal husbandry. As an important tool for herdsmen to collect and use information for animal husbandry production and innovation, the internet is not only an inner motivation for improvement of production efficiency but also an important engine for transformation of animal husbandry modernization. It is of practical significance to analyze the impact of internet use on the production efficiency of animal husbandry from the micro-level. This paper, based on the survey data of 340 herdsmen in Inner Mongolia, adopts the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) model to measure the production efficiency of animal husbandry and selects the Tobit model and moderation effect model to analyze the relationship between internet use and animal husbandry production efficiency under the influence of different capitals. Results show that the production efficiency of animal husbandry is relatively low and internet use has a positive and statistically significant effect on production efficiency; moreover, social capital and financial capital have a negative moderation effect when internet use affects production efficiency. Our findings suggest that the use of internet technology should be paid more attention in order to increase the production efficiency of grass-based animal husbandry in Inner Mongolia.