Research on the Effects of Social Learning and Risk Attitudes on Rural Households’ Participation in Agricultural Product E-Commerce

E-commerce for agricultural products serves as a critical link connecting smallholders with markets; however, technological barriers and market uncertainties during its transitional phase have led to low participation rates among farmers, creating a key bottleneck for industrial upgrading. The social learning mechanisms inherent in rural communities may influence farmers’ decisions by reshaping risk attitudes—a pathway that has not been sufficiently empirically examined. This study examines how rural social learning affects farmers’ participation in agricultural e-commerce through the channel of risk attitude. Using survey data from 327 peach growers in Qingdao, Shandong, we construct an analytical framework of “social learning–risk attitude–e-commerce participation” and identify the mechanisms with a Heckman two-step model, IV-Probit, and mediation analysis. The results show that both observational and reinforcement learning significantly increase farmers’ probability and intensity of participation; risk attitude partially mediates this relationship, and contextual factors such as logistics accessibility also matter. The contribution lies in embedding social learning and risk attitude in a single empirical framework and providing evidence from a highly digitized yet agricultural Chinese context for tiered rural e-commerce training and risk education.