Digital literacy and the rural cooking energy transition: Evidence from rural China

Abstract

The adoption of clean energy is crucial for the sustainable development of human society. An in-depth study of the relationship between digital literacy and farmers' culinary energy transition is important for China's clean energy transition. Based on the 2020 the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data, this study investigated the effects of digital literacy on farmers' household cooking fuel choices and their impact mechanisms using logit modeling, and analyzed the heterogeneity of these effects across different regions, ages, genders, and health conditions. The results show that (1) Increased digital literacy has a significant effect on clean cooking fuel choices of farmers. (2) Heterogeneity analyses showed that digital literacy contributes more significantly to clean cooking fuel choices among healthier and less healthy young and middle-aged farmers in the East and West. (3) Mechanistic analysis shows that digital literacy can enhance the use of clean cooking fuels among farm households through two channels: expanding information channels and increasing off-farm employment. The findings of this paper can provide policy recommendations to promote the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7.