ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Land, Livelihoods and Food Security
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1546024
This article is part of the Research TopicGlobal Land Use Intensity Change and Its Impact on Food SecurityView all 12 articles
The Impact of Digital Literacy on Farmland Scale Operations：Exploring the Mediating and Regulatory Roles of Land Transfer and Land Dependence
Provisionally accepted
- 1Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
- 2Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, China
- 3Nanchang Business School, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Jiujiang, China
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This study utilizes data from the 2020 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences rural revitalization research to assess farmers' digital literacy levels through factor analysis and principal component analysis. After elucidating the underlying logic of how digital literacy influences the scale of agricultural land operations, we employ linear regression models, mediated moderation models, and other statistical tools to delve into the specific impacts of farmers' digital literacy on their farmland scaling behaviors. Furthermore, we aim to validate the intrinsic mechanisms connecting these two aspects. The baseline regression results indicate that farmers' digital literacy positively correlates with their engagement in farmland scale management. This finding persists even after employing alternative regression models, effect measurements, and instrumental variable tests.Mechanism testing reveals that an enhancement in farmers' digital literacy facilitates farmland transfers, thereby promoting large-scale farmland operations. Additionally, farmers' land dependence amplifies the positive effect of digital literacy on such operations. Sub-dimension analysis yields further insights: In the realm of digital access, improved digital media literacy encourages farmers to consolidate their land holdings, expand production scales, harness economies of scale, and ultimately boost agricultural production efficiency. Within the digital application dimension, heightened levels of digital business literacy and digital information literacy among farmers spur the expansion of their land operation scales and increase land concentration. Conversely, elevated digital social literacy and digital problem-solving literacy primarily drive the expansion of land operation scales but exert minimal influence on land concentration. Heterogeneity analysis uncovers variations in the impact of farmers' digital literacy on farmland scale operation behavior across different human capital levels, age groups, and urban-rural contexts. Consequently, to foster farmland scale operations, it is imperative to: Promote the development of rural digital infrastructure to enhance farmers' digital accessibility. Strengthen the factor market system to facilitate efficient circulation of various factors. Increase support for farmer benefits and assistance programs to bolster their risk resilience. Intensify skills training for farmers to activate their intrinsic motivations as primary actors in this process.
Keywords: Digital Literacy, farmland scale management, Land transfer, Land dependence, Land
Received: 16 Dec 2024; Accepted: 21 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Yu and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bin Liu, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, China
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