Digital literacy and farmers’ uptake of socialized services: a U-shaped relationship-CRRS based data validation

Yongmei Ye, Dingrui Gu, Lulu Yang, Song Yu

Introduction Socialized services can facilitate the organic integration of smallholder farmers with modern agriculture, playing a significant role in accelerating the advancement of Chinese-style agricultural modernization and building China into a leading agricultural nation. Methods This study uses the 2020 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences rural revitalization research data, applies factor analysis and principal component analysis to measure the digital literacy level of farmers, and after clarifying the internal logic of digital literacy affecting the service scale operation of farmers, applies a linear regression model, mediation effect model, and other methods to explore the specific impact of the digital literacy level of farmers on the service scale operation of farmers and further verify the intrinsic mechanism between the two. Results The results of the benchmark regression show that the impact of farmers’ digital literacy level on service scale operation shows a nonlinear U-shaped relationship that shrinks first and then expands, and the U-shaped relationship still holds after the robustness test and endogeneity test. The results of the mechanism test show that the improvement of farmers’ digital literacy level promotes the development of agricultural service scale operation by promoting the fourfold mechanism of farmers’ natural capital accumulation, social capital accumulation, financial capital accumulation, and human capital accumulation. The results of the sub-dimension test show that: in the dimension of digital access, digital media literacy will hinder the scale operation of agricultural service; in the dimension of digital application, digital information literacy shows a U-shape relationship with the scale operation of agricultural service; digital social literacy shows a U-shape relationship with the width of agricultural service, and negatively affects the depth of service; digital business literacy has a positive and significant effect on the scale operation of agricultural service; digital problem-solving literacy has a positive and significant effect on the width of agricultural service; and digital problem-solving literacy has a positive and significant effect on the scale operation of agricultural service; positive and significant effect on farmers’ service width and negative effect on service depth. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that there are urban-rural and regional differences in the influence of farmers’ digital literacy level on service-scale operation behavior. Among them, the service scale operation behavior of farmers in remote areas is affected by the U-shaped influence of the digital literacy level, and the service scale operation behavior of farmers in the suburbs of the city is not affected by it; the influence of the level of digital literacy of farmers in the eastern region shows a U-shaped relationship, the influence on the western region shows a linear positive correlation, and the influence on the central region is not significant. Discussion In order to better play the role of digital literacy level on agricultural service-scale operation, it is necessary to further strengthen the construction of rural digital infrastructure; encourage social capital and financial capital to invest in agriculture; promote the accumulation of human capital of farmers; and improve the agricultural socialized service system.