ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Sustainability and Resilience in Agri-Food Supply Chains Through Multi-Criteria Decision-Making MethodsView all 3 articles
Digital capability drive sales of agricultural products: evidence from China
Provisionally accepted
- Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, China
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Digital capability is a crucial skill for farmers' output in the context of the digital economy, and the marketing of agricultural products has long been a significant topic in agricultural economic studies. This study measures the level of digital competence of farm households from three dimensions— digital access conditions, digital information acquisition ability, and digital application ability—based on data from the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS). It also empirically investigates the mechanism of the role of digital competence on the sale of agricultural products.In contrast to previous research that just looks at green transformation or production efficiency, this study employs a dual mediation model to show the intricate relationships between digital capabilities and agricultural product sales.The results show that raising farmers' level of digital competency can effectively boost sales of agricultural products; this effect is particularly noticeable for young farmers, large-scale farmers, and farmers in hilly areas.The mechanism analysis also demonstrates that increasing farm households' digital capabilities can boost agricultural product sales through two different avenues: increasing agricultural production efficiency and encouraging farmers to practice green production to improve the quality of their products, which will increase sales revenue. The paper's findings highlight the significance of digital competency in agricultural development and urge farmers to be able to capitalize on digital rural development opportunities to increase their revenue.
Keywords: digital capability, Agricultural products, Sales, Income, Farmers
Received: 01 Jul 2025; Accepted: 30 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wei. 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: Xi Wei, qingtingxixi1957@163.com
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