ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
This article is part of the Research TopicHarnessing Digital Innovation for Sustainable Agricultural DevelopmentView all 38 articles
The impact of digital village development on farmers' subjective well-b eing in rural China: The role of core capabilities and income inequality
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nanxun Innovation Institute, Zhejiang University of Water Resources and Electric Power,, hangzhou, China
- 2College of Economics and Management, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou, China, hangzhou, China
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Digital village development has emerged as a key strategy for advancing comprehensive rural revitalization. However, it remains uncertain whether this initiative promotes equitable benefits for all farmers or exacerbates disparities. This study integrates survey data from rural areas in five provinces with the Peking University Digital Village Index to investigate the impact of digital village development on subjective well-being (SWB), with particular attention to capability enhancement and equity concerns. Benchmark regression results show that digital village development enhances rural households' well-being significantly. Specifically, digital infrastructure, economic digitization, governance digitization, and life digitization each contribute meaningfully to improving SWB, with these effects remaining robust across various assessments. Further analysis of the mediation effect model indicate that the digitization of rural governance and daily life substantially increases income and capabilities, thereby enhancing well-being by fostering self-improvement and social affiliation. Nevertheless, digital infrastructure and economic digitization also appear to intensify internal inequality, ultimately diminishing overall SWB. Arguably, the development of digital rural areas accelerates income growth among high-income farmers, while offering limited benefits to low-income farmers. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the positive impact of digital rural development on SWB is significantly more substantial among regions with higher levels of digital infrastructure, high-income households, and individuals with higher human capital. Collectively, these findings offer theoretical insights into the mechanisms through which digital village development enhances farmers' subjective well-being, while also offering practical guidance for creating equitable and inclusive digital village policies.
Keywords: digital village construction, Subjective well-being, core capability, Relativedeprivation, Chinese rural households
Received: 07 Apr 2025; Accepted: 31 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Huo and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mei Zhang, zhangm@zjweu.edu.cn
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