ICT Adoption, Individual Income and Psychological Health of Rural Farmers in China

• Published in: Applied Research in Quality of Life Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 71 - 91
• Main Authors: Zhu, Zhongkun, Ma, Wanglin, Leng, Chenxin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.02.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Access to information; Anniversaries; Econometrics; Farm income; Farmers; Happiness; Households; Income; Information technology; Life satisfaction; Loneliness; Political Science; Psychological distress; Quality of Life Research; Rural areas; Smartphones; Social Sciences; Sociology; Stress; Variables; China; D31; Two-stage residual inclusion; I31; Income; Psychological health; ICT adoption; Rural China; L86
• ISSN: 1871-2584; 1871-2576
• DOI: 10.1007/s11482-020-09879-2

This paper examines the joint effects of the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and individual income on farmers’ psychological health, measured by happiness, life satisfaction, stress and loneliness. We employ a two-stage residual inclusion approach combined with a conditional mixed process model to analyse data collected from 7065 rural households in China. The econometric strategy addresses the potential endogeneity issues of ICT adoption and individual income and captures the possible interdependence between the two variables. The empirical findings reveal that both ICT adoption and high individual income are significantly associated with higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction, but are significantly associated with lower levels of stress and loneliness. Further analysis reveals that there exists a positive interaction effect between farmers’ decision to adopt ICTs and their income.