数字基础设施建设对农村居民收入的影响效应

The Effect of Digital Infrastructure Construction on the Income of Rural Residents

基于中国284个地级及以上城市2010—2019年的面板数据,综合运用双重差分模型等多种方法,多维度对数字基础设施建设与农村居民收入的关系及其内在机制进行评估。研究结果显示:“宽带中国”政策显著提高了农村居民收入水平;运用工具变量法、倾向得分匹配等方法进行稳健性检验后,结论仍然成立。机制分析表明,缩减数字鸿沟、数字普惠金融发展、创新创业是数字基础设施建设增加农村居民收入的重要机制。异质性分析表明,在东部地区与中部地区、大中规模城市以及较高传统基础设施水平地区,数字基础设施的增收效应较为明显;而在西部地区、小规模城市以及较低传统基础设施水平的地区,数字基础设施建设增收效应不明显。空间溢出效应分析表明,数字基础设施建设对于周边地区农村居民收入水平具有正向的空间溢出效应。

Digital infrastructure has brought profound impacts on government governance and regulation,enterprise production and operation,the lives of urban and rural residents,etc.As a product of the new round of technological revolution,the digital economy combined with infrastructure construction has created a new vehicle for rural economic development,which has upgraded and reshaped the production and consumption patterns of rural society from multiple dimensions.Therefore,this paper uses the“broadband China”policy as a quasi-natural experiment to focus on the digital infrastructure construction and rural residents income increase in China,and explores the effect of China's digital infrastructure construction on farmers income and its intrinsic mechanism,which is of great theoretical and practical significance to enrich the research content of digital village construction topics,solve the weaknesses of rural industrial development,and promote rural revitalization.Based on the panel data of 284 cities in China from 2010 to 2019,the paper assesses the relationship between digital infrastructure construction and rural residents income and the underlying mechanism in a multi-dimensional manner using various methods such as difference-in-difference model,spatial difference-in-difference model,and mechanism analysis.The study finds that the“broadband China”policy has significantly increased the income level of rural residents,and this conclusion is still valid after the robustness test by using the instrumental variables method,propensity score matching,and excluding the influence of other policies.The mechanism analysis shows that reducing the digital divide,digital inclusive financial development,and innovation and entrepreneurship are important mechanisms for digital infrastructure construction to increase the income of rural residents.Heterogeneity analysis shows that in the eastern and central regions,large and medium-sized cities and areas with higher levels of traditional infrastructure have more obvious income-increasing effects of digital infrastructure,while in the western regions,small-sized cities and areas with lower levels of traditional infrastructure have less obvious income-increasing effects.The analysis of spatial spillover effect shows that digital infrastructure construction has a positive spatial spillover effect on the income level of rural residents in the surrounding areas.This study contributes to the literature in the following ways.Firstly,it investigates the effect of digital infrastructure construction on farmers income from two perspectives:theoretical mechanism and empirical test,which enriches the related research on the impact of digital infrastructure construction on agricultural and rural development in the context of digital economy development.Secondly,the empirical test on the mechanism of the effect of digital infrastructure construction on farmers income,combined with the heterogeneity analysis of location,urban scale,and infrastructure stock,as well as the spillover effect test,enriches the research on digital countryside,provides an empirical basis for building digital countryside and improving rural residents income,and provides a policy reference for giving full play to the income growth effect of digital infrastructure on rural residents.