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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1565067
Digital Economy, Consumption Structure and Rural Economic Transformation: A Case Study of China
Provisionally accepted- Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, China
Under the background of rural revitalization strategy, the digital economy is becoming a new driving force for China's rural economic transformation. Based on China's provincial panel data from 2013 to 2020, this paper uses the two-way fixed effect model, intermediary effect model, and panel threshold model to deeply analyze the impact and internal mechanism of the digital economy development on rural economic transformation. The research shows that the digital economy significantly promotes China's rural economic transformation, and this conclusion is still valid after robustness tests such as selecting historical data as instrumental variables. The mechanism test confirms that the digital economy promotes rural economic transformation by optimizing residents' consumption structure. In addition, the digital economy has a single threshold effect on the rural economic transformation based on the level of consumption structure. After crossing the threshold value, its promotion effect on the rural economic transformation is more prominent, indicating that the impact of the digital economy on the rural economic transformation will show the nonlinear characteristics of increasing ' marginal effect ' due to the different levels of consumption structure; Heterogeneity analysis found that compared to southern regions, the digital economy in northern regions has a more significant promoting effect on rural economic transformation. This study deepens the understanding of the motivation for rural economic transformation and the effects, mechanisms, and regional differences of the digital economy empowering rural economic transformation. Based on this, this paper proposes that the government fully realize the digital economy's important role in rural economic transformation, actively innovate and promote digital technology, continue to expand and strengthen the consumer Internet, adjust measures to local conditions, and try to achieve coordinated development.
Keywords: digital economy, upgrading consumption structure, Rural economic transformation, Mediating effect, threshold effect
Received: 23 Jan 2025; Accepted: 11 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Chen, Zhang and Wenmei. 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:
Liao Wenmei, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, China
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