The Impact of Digital Literacy on Farmers’ Green Production Behavior: Mediating Effects Based on Ecological Cognition

Farmers’ green production behavior is one of the main determinants of the sustainability of the agricultural economy. In this study, Ordered Logit, OLS, and 2SLS models were conducted to evaluate the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ green production behavior. On this basis, the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method was conducted to deal with the endogeneity bias that may result from the sample self-selection problem. We also adopt the mediation effect model to test the mediating mechanism of ecological cognition between digital literacy and farmers’ green production behavior. The results showed that three different types of digital literacy significantly improved farmers’ green production behavior. We also found that farmers’ green production behavior improved by 19.87%, 15.92%, and 24.16% through digital learning, social, and transaction literacy. Meanwhile, the mediating effect showed that digital literacy improves farmers’ green production behavior by increasing ecological cognition. We demonstrate that three different types of digital literacy significantly improved farmers’ green production behavior. Therefore, policies to increase digital literacy among farmers should be further improved to promote farmers’ green production behavior.