Study on the pathways and mechanisms of digital empowerment driving farmers’ participation decisions in contract farming

Contract farming is regarded as an institutional vehicle for implementing sustainable agriculture at the micro-level. In the context of digital technologies reshaping agricultural value chains, exploring the pathways and mechanisms through which digital empowerment drives farmers’ participation in contract farming represents a crucial research topic for advancing modern agricultural development. Based on the research data from 1,370 grape growers in Liaoning Province, China in 2023, we examined the impact of digital empowerment on farmers’ decision-making in contract farming through Binary Logit model. We further employ the CMP method and Oster’s omitted variable test to conduct endogeneity tests. The study found that: (i) The digital empowerment significantly improves farmers’ decision-making on participating in contract farming. In terms of willingness to participate, the analytical capability plays a major promoting role, while the technological capability has an inhibitory effect. In terms of participating behavior, the positive influence of analytical capability is also robust. (ii) The digital empowerment promotes farmers’ decision-making by broadening social networks and enhancing innovative awareness. The “social network—innovation awareness” exhibits a chain mediation effect between digital empowerment and farmers’ decision-making. (iii) Compared with small-scale farmers, digital empowerment has a more significant impact on the contract farming participation decisions of large-scale farmers. Consequently, the research findings offer stakeholders for implementing targeted interventions aimed at boosting farmers’ decision-making to participate in contract farming. The discussion section identifies the core theoretical breakthrough of this work: it traces the progression of relevant practices from local exploration to nationwide scaling and application, while highlighting their latent capacity to yield global influence.