Linking farmers to markets: Does cooperative membership facilitate e-commerce adoption and income growth in rural China?☆

This study uses the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey to investigate the associa-tions between cooperative membership, E-commerce adoption, and household income. Using the conditional mixed process framework, we find that cooperative membership inhibits rural households' e-commerce adoption, while cooperative membership and e-commerce adoption significantly increase rural household income. The two-stage predictor substitution approach confirms this result. Further, participating in different types of cooperatives has heterogeneous effects on the e-commerce adoption decision and household income growth. However, regardless of whether or which cooperative households participate in, e-commerce adoption significantly increases household income. Policymakers can work with e-commerce enterprises, leverage the current cooperatives, especially the village stock economic and market cooperative, and set up e-commerce cooperatives to popularize e-commerce-related knowledge to encourage e-commerce adoption among rural households. Further, considering the regional disparities in e-commerce adoption, it is essential to strengthen the policy support for the rural households residing in Central and Western China to narrow the "digital divide."(c) 2023 Economic Society of Australia, Queensland. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.