Revitalizing Agricultural Economy Through Rural E-Commerce? Experience from China’s Revolutionary Old Areas

Many of the world’s less developed regions may not be able to improve the well-being of rural residents through agricultural revitalization because of their remoteness from agricultural markets. Using the county-level data set of China’s underdeveloped old revolutionary base areas from 2010 to 2021, this paper takes the policy planning of rural e-commerce as event intervention to investigate the driving role of the digital product market on agricultural economic development. Empirical results show that rural e-commerce planning policy has significantly promoted the agricultural added value of the pilot counties, and the digital market is the key driving factor of the agricultural economic growth in these underdeveloped areas. Both food production and livestock output have increased significantly as a result of e-commerce policies. Considering the potential bias of the bidirectional fixed effect estimators of staggered differences-in-differences (DID), this study uses heterogeneous robust estimators to verify the growth effect of the agricultural economy. Specifically, digital agricultural markets have significantly promoted agricultural mechanization and significantly improved agricultural total factor productivity. Moreover, empirical evidence does not support transmission mechanisms for off-farm employment and agricultural entrepreneurship. The findings can help less developed countries and regions develop policies to expand the agricultural markets with digital dividends, thereby promoting the development of the agricultural economy.