Driving mechanism of Internet use on vegetable farmers’ smart farming adoption

Smart farming (SF) is an important driving force for promoting the development of agricultural modernization. Internet use plays a key role in promoting farmers’ adoption of SF. Based on survey data from 603 rural households in Jiangxi Province, this study employs a binary Probit model and a mediating effect model to explore the impact and mechanism of Internet use on farmers’ adoption behavior of SF. The findings show that (1) Internet use significantly promotes farmers’ adoption of SF, and the conclusion still holds after conducting robustness tests through replacing the explained variable, subsample regression, and a placebo test. (2) Risk attitude and economic cost play a mediating role in the promotion of farmers’ adoption of SF by Internet use, with the proportions of their mediating effects accounting for 8.56 and 6.81%, respectively. Government incentives play a positive moderating role in the process of Internet use, affecting farmers’ adoption behavior of SF. (3) Internet use is more effective in significantly promoting the adoption of SF among farmers in younger age groups and with higher education levels. Based on this, the government should strengthen Internet infrastructure construction in major vegetable-producing areas to lower the thresholds for vegetable farmers’ Internet usage. It should conduct SF-related training via Internet platforms to help farmers improve their risk attitudes and reduce their economic costs, and implement government subsidy policies linked to Internet usage and SF. Meanwhile, it should provide support for innovation pilots integrating Internet usage and SF to younger and highly educated vegetable farmers, and develop simplified Internet usage tools for elderly and less educated vegetable farmers—all so as to highlight the promotional role of Internet usage in vegetable farmers’ adoption of SF.