Digital village construction and depressive symptoms in rural middle-aged and older adults: Evidence from China

Background: Due to the rapid increase in Internet penetration in rural areas of China in recent years, Internet usage among middle-aged and older adults in these areas has also increased dramatically. This has facilitated their engagement in more online shopping, entertainment, and learning activities. Consequently, the construction of digital villages is inevitably and closely linked to the depressive symptoms of rural middle-aged and older adults. Objective: The aim was to use data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) 2020 to reveal the relationship between regional digital village construction and individual depressive symptoms among rural middle-aged and older adults. Methods: The final sample included 8988 rural middle-aged and older adults. The data on digital village construction were derived from prefecture-level city index scores compiled by the Institute of New Rural Development at Peking University in conjunction with the Ali Research Institute. Depressive symptoms were measured using the 10-item Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale from the 2020 CHARLS questionnaire. Given that the explanatory variable, depressive symptoms among rural middle-aged and older adults, is an integer value >0, we used the Poisson mixed-effects model for regression analyses. Results: On the map, the average level of depressive symptoms was lower in areas with a high level of digital village construction in 2020. In the t-test, depressive symptoms were significantly higher in rural middle-aged and older adults than in their urban counterparts. In the regression analysis using the Poisson mixed-effects model, digital village construction was significantly and negatively correlated with the depressive symptoms of rural middle-aged and older adults, and this result passed the robustness test. Limitations: The causal relationship between the construction of digital villages and the depressive symptoms of rural middle-aged and older adults is not clear in the results obtained. Conclusions: We identified three key factors-income welfare, consumption welfare, and cognitive welfare-as mediators between digital village construction and depressive symptoms among middle-aged and older adults. Our findings also show that disadvantaged groups, such as those with low education, limited social networks, and living in non-central areas, derive greater benefits from digital village construction. These insights offer valuable guidance for optimizing digital village policies in developing countries.