The Impact of Mobile Internet Access on Agricultural Insurance Participation: Mediating Role of Financial Exclusion and Heterogeneity Analysis

In recent years, China has actively promoted agricultural insurance, but challenges such as insufficient coverage and limited digitalization persist. To address these issues, this study draws on data from CAU-IFS 2024 and examines the impact of mobile internet accessibility on rural households' participation in agricultural production insurance and the related decision-making mechanisms. Results from Probit and Tobit models show that mobile internet significantly increases both the likelihood of insurance participation and premium expenditures, with these effects being especially pronounced among households outside cooperatives, those with higher risk preferences, and those with higher incomes. Robustness checks confirm these findings, while mediation analysis reveals that mobile internet promotes agricultural production insurance participation by mitigating financial exclusion. These insights provide valuable policy implications for advancing agricultural insurance development.