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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

Sec. Land, Livelihoods and Food Security

Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1649753

Does the Rural Digital Economy Promote Shared Prosperity Among Farmers? Evidence from China

Provisionally accepted
  • Southwest University of Political Science & Law, Chongqing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

As a typical developing agricultural country, China has a large number of farmers. The realization of the goal of common prosperity for all Chinese people and the process of Chinese-style modernization are directly related to whether Chinese farmers can achieve common prosperity. This study uses a fixed effects regression approach to evaluate how the development of the rural digital economy affects farmers' shared prosperity using balanced provincial panel data from 2013 to 2022. The mediation model is constructed to investigate the influence of high-quality agricultural development. The results demonstrate that the development of the rural digital economy can promote the common prosperity of farmers, and a number of robustness tests confirm the validity of this conclusion. The development of the rural digital economy has apromoting influence on farmers' common prosperity, with the effect progressively growing as farmers' common prosperity levels continue to rise. This tendency is stronger in the west and lower in the east. There is a "U-shaped" tendency in the way that the growth of the rural digital economy affects farmers' overall prosperity. Furthermore, the promotion of the shared prosperity of farmers through the rural digital economy is facilitated by high-quality agricultural development. The findings suggest that advancing rural digital infrastructure and services, alongside improvements in agricultural quality, is essential for fostering equitable development outcomes. This study adds to the expanding discussion about digital inclusion and rural revitalization in the global effort toward sustainable and inclusive food systems.

Keywords: rural digital economy, Shared Prosperity among Farmers, digital economy, Shared prosperity, Rural Digital Transformation, Global South Evidence

Received: 18 Jun 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 LU, Gou, Wu and Feng. 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: ZHAOYANG LU, Southwest University of Political Science & Law, Chongqing, China

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