{"title":"Online markets, offline happiness: E-commerce development and subjective well-being in rural China","authors":"Binhui Wei , Chunkai Zhao , Mingzhong Luo","doi":"10.1016/j.chieco.2024.102247","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Employing a quasi-natural experiment of the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration County (NRECDC) policy, our research aimed to explore the causal effect of e-commerce development and residents' subjective well-being (SWB) in rural China. By adopting the data of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2014 to 2020 and using a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) method, we found that rural e-commerce development resulted in an average increase of 2.40% in happiness scores. This positive effect can be explained by absolute material welfare enhancement, relative disparity reduction, and social capital accumulation. Further evidence suggests that e-commerce users are more likely to benefit from the NRECDC policy and that the synergistic effect of digital finance and e-commerce contributes to rural residents' SWB. However, we revealed that the potential digital divide effect in e-commerce development, due to technological barriers and self-digital exclusion, has not enhanced the SWB of some relatively disadvantaged groups in rural China. Our findings enrich the research field of digital well-being and shed light on the potential digital divide effects of digital tools such as e-commerce in rural China.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48285,"journal":{"name":"中国经济评论","volume":"87 ","pages":"Article 102247"},"PeriodicalIF":5.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"中国经济评论","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X24001366","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Employing a quasi-natural experiment of the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration County (NRECDC) policy, our research aimed to explore the causal effect of e-commerce development and residents' subjective well-being (SWB) in rural China. By adopting the data of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2014 to 2020 and using a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) method, we found that rural e-commerce development resulted in an average increase of 2.40% in happiness scores. This positive effect can be explained by absolute material welfare enhancement, relative disparity reduction, and social capital accumulation. Further evidence suggests that e-commerce users are more likely to benefit from the NRECDC policy and that the synergistic effect of digital finance and e-commerce contributes to rural residents' SWB. However, we revealed that the potential digital divide effect in e-commerce development, due to technological barriers and self-digital exclusion, has not enhanced the SWB of some relatively disadvantaged groups in rural China. Our findings enrich the research field of digital well-being and shed light on the potential digital divide effects of digital tools such as e-commerce in rural China.
期刊介绍:
The China Economic Review publishes original works of scholarship which add to the knowledge of the economy of China and to economies as a discipline. We seek, in particular, papers dealing with policy, performance and institutional change. Empirical papers normally use a formal model, a data set, and standard statistical techniques. Submissions are subjected to double-blind peer review.