Difference in the influence of internet use on the relative poverty among farmers with different income structures

Compared with absolute poverty, relative poverty is more concerned about social equity. Network poverty alleviation is one of the effective ways to bridge the urban–rural digital divide and solve relative poverty problem. Existing studies have confirmed the positive role of Internet use on the alleviation of relative poverty among farmers, but there is much less study analyze the differences in the influence of Internet use on the relative poverty among farmers with different income structure. In this study, we use the data from China Family Panel Studies and use the Probit model for benchmark regression to study the influence of Internet use on rural household relative poverty. Also, we use the redefinition of core variables to conduct robustness tests and use instrumental variables to deal with endogenous issues. The empirical results show that Internet use significantly reduces the probability of farmers falling into relative poverty, and Internet use has a better effect on poverty reduction for full-time farmers than part-time farmers and non-farmers. Further the analysis of the impact mechanism finds that Internet use could impact the relative poverty of rural households through its effects on their information channels, human capital and social capital. Then, we analyze the differences in the impact mechanisms of Internet use on different types of farmers and find that the mediating effect of information channel was not significant for full-time farmers; while for part-time farmers, enhancing human capital play a more important role.