The impact of internet use on entrepreneurial behavior and income: Evidence from Chinese rural households

Abstract

China's low-income population is primarily mad up of farmers. Elevating their earnings is the key to realizing common prosperity. Based on the quasi-natural experiment of the "Broadband China" strategy, we applied the staggered double difference method to explore the impact of Internet use on the income of Chinese rural households. The findings indicate that Internet use can enhance the business income of rural households, whereas it does not have such significantly positive effects on other income. After mitigating endogeneity issues, the basic pattern of the effects remains. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that females and individuals with higher levels of education benefit more from the "Broadband China" policy. The mechanism results show that Income boosting effect may arise from improving rural entrepreneurship behavior.