Neighborhood effect, virtual social networks, and farmers' social e-commerce participation behavior

Abstract

The development of social e-commerce can integrate the production, circulation, and sales of agricultural products; realize the digitalization of the agricultural production process; and promote farmers' savings and profits. On the basis of the stimulus–organism–response theory and the embedding theories, microsurvey data of 302 farmers regarding the winter jujube production area of the Dali facility in the Shaanxi Province were used to empirically test the impact of neighborhood effect (NE) and virtual social networks on farmers' participation in social e-commerce, and the interaction effect of the two aspects. Additionally, we analyzed its mechanism under the framework of “social networks-farmers' cognition-social e-commerce participation behavior (SEPB).” The research results are as follows. First, neighborhood participation, social software friends, and information release have a significant positive impact on farmers' SEPB, whereas information reception has a negative impact. Second, the empirical results considering the comprehensive effects of various variables show that NE, network communication, and network participation (NP) can all promote farmers' participation in social e-commerce, and NP is complementary to NE. Third, mechanism analysis shows that NE and NP produce partial mediating effect and complete mediating effect, respectively, through self-competence recognition (SR), which in turn positively impacts the SEPB. In the heterogeneity analysis, for farmers with a plantation area of less than or equal to 0.447 ha, SR has a partial mediating effect on the process of NE affecting SEPB, whereas the motivating factor is NP. In terms of labor force structure, only the percentage of nonagricultural workers exceeds 0.253, NE and NP affect SEPB through SR. This study can provide a reference for farmers to rationally use their social networks, and guide the formulation of social e-commerce support policies at the national level.