Does mobile broadband use promote smallholder entrepreneurship? Evidence from rural China

ABSTRACT

This study explored the impact of mobile broadband use on smallholders’ entrepreneurial engagement and willingness using data from a household survey collected from three provinces in China. We used an endogenous switching probit model to account for the potential selection bias associated with mobile broadband use. The empirical results indicated that mobile broadband use exerted positive and statistically significant impacts on smallholders’ entrepreneurial engagement and willingness. In particular, we found that mobile broadband use increased the probability of smallholders’ entrepreneurial engagement and willingness by 15.1 and 50.9% points, respectively. Further analysis revealed that the effects of mobile broadband use on smallholder entrepreneurship were heterogeneous across regions. Additionally, we found that while the impact of mobile broadband use on entrepreneurial engagement was the largest for smallholders with high income, its impact on entrepreneurial willingness appeared to be the greatest for smallholders with low income. This study extended the literature by analysing smallholder entrepreneurship and provided evidence on the effect of mobile ICT on smallholder entrepreneurship.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile broadband use
• smallholder entrepreneurship
• endogenous switching probit model
• heterogeneous effect

JEL CODES:

• D19
• I39
• M21

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (22CGL047), Humanities and Social Science Research Fund of the Ministry of Education of China (19YJC790063), National Natural Science Foundation of China (72273108), Guanghua Talent Project of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, The 13th Five-year Plan Foundation of Educational Science of Fujian Province (FJJKCG20-194).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Credit author statement

Long Yang: Conceptualization, methodology, data analysis, writing, editing and revision. Haiyang Lu: Methodology, data analysis, editing and revision. Meng Li: Data collection, data analysis, writing.

Notes

¹ Specifically, as shown in Figure 4, we selected Pengshan and Pengzhou counties in Sichuan Province, Lingbao and Qi counties in Henan Province, and Jiaocheng and Yongtai counties in Fujian Province. We also marked the location of the core cities in the map, so we can judge the distance between the study area and the core city.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [72273108]; National Social Science Foundation of China [22CGL047]; Guanghua Talent Project of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics Humanities and Social Science Research Fund of the Ministry of Education of China [19YJC790063]; The 13th Five-year Plan Foundation of Educational Science of Fujian Province [FJJKCG20-194]