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Does social capital influence farmers’ e-commerce entrepreneurship? China’s regional evidence

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Abstract

Rural e-commerce promotes the rapid development of the rural economy with advanced digital technology. Digital dividend attracts farmers to participate in rural e-commerce entrepreneurial activities. Using the survey data of Taobao villages in China, this study examines the impact of social capital on farmers’ participation in e-commerce entrepreneurship. The results show that social capital has a positive effect on farmers’ e-commerce entrepreneurial behavior. Additionally, different dimensions of social capital have different impacts on farmers’ e-commerce entrepreneurship. The impact of social networks and social norms on farmers’ e-commerce entrepreneurship is greater than that of social trust and social participation. The higher the educational level of farmers, the more pronounced the influence of social networks on their e-commerce entrepreneurial behavior. Moreover, we find that social capital influences farmers’ e-commerce entrepreneurship by enhancing the information capability of farmers. Information capability plays a partial mediating role in the impact of social networks and social norms on farmers’ e-commerce entrepreneurial behavior, and plays a complete mediating role in the impact of social participation. Our study emphasizes farmers’ social capital plays an important role in expanding information channels and promoting farmers’ participation in e-commerce, which provides valuable references for other countries and regions to develop rural e-commerce.

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Notes

  1. The farmers’ e-commerce entrepreneurial behavior refers to the actions of farmers who have certain entrepreneurial capital and capabilities and rely on Internet-based e-commerce platforms to sell agricultural or other products and provide services.

  2. AliResearch defined the “Taobao Village cluster” as a cluster with more than 10 neighboring Taobao Villages.

  3. Taobao is China’s largest consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce platform. The Taobao platform has a huge consumer user base, and its convenient operation has reduced the difficulty of starting an online business, which provides the necessary foundations and strong support for farmers’ e-commerce entrepreneurship. In 2022, the number of “Taobao Villages” in China reached 7780.

  4. We summarize these survey questions in Table 9.

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Funding

This research was funded by the Research Projects of Humanities and Social Sciences in Anhui Universities (SK2021A0216); the Sichuan Research Center for Aging and Industrial Development (XJLL2023017); the Web Culture Project Sponsored by the Humanities and Social Science Research Base of the Sichuan Provincial Education Department (WLWH23-17).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Yao Wang

  2. School of Finance, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu, 233030, China

    Yuan Tian

  3. College of Public Administration, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, 411105, China

    Muhammad Nasrullah

  4. School of Economics, Xihua University, Chengdu, 610039, China

    Rui Zhang

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Appendix

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See Tables 

Table 8 The definition of social capital measurement indicators
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8, 9 ,

Table 9 Descriptive statistics of social capital measurement indicators
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Table 10 Research scale reliability and validity tests
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10,

Table 11 Descriptive statistics of information capability measures
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11 and

Table 12 Research scale reliability and validity tests
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12.

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Wang, Y., Tian, Y., Nasrullah, M. et al. Does social capital influence farmers’ e-commerce entrepreneurship? China’s regional evidence. Electron Commer Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-023-09794-2

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