Can smartphone use increase farmers' willingness to participate in the centralized treatment of rural domestic sewage? Evidence from rural China

Existing studies have explored the potential contributions of the Internet and smartphone use to agricultural production and environmental governance. However, there is a lack of in-depth exploration of the internal mechanism of smartphone use influencing farmers' decision-making. Based on survey data of farmers in the Hubei and Henan provinces, this study uses the endogenous switching probit model to empirically test the impact of smartphone use on farmers' willingness to participate in the centralized treatment of rural domestic sewage (WTP-RDSCT). The results of the study showed that 63.71% of the samples used smartphones, and 73.62% of the sampled farmers were willing to participate in rural domestic sewage-centralized treatment. Smartphone use can increase WTP-RDSCT by an average of 29.6%, and there is a positive correlation between use intensity and WTP-RDSCT. In addition to the direct impact, smartphone use also indirectly affects WTP-RDSCT through the intermediary effects of information search costs, environmental awareness and social capital. In addition, the information presentation form (video and text) has a significant positive impact on WTP-RDSCT, and the impact of the presentation form of video is greater than that of text.