Research on the influence mechanism of internet use on rural residents’ consumption level in China——The mediating effect of consumption literacy

by Zhen Tian, Rui Wang, Yan Tan

Based on the survey data of 936 rural households in Jiangsu Province, China in 2020, this paper empirically tests the influence mechanism of internet use on the rural residents’ consumption level by constructing the theoretical analysis framework of “internet use—consumption literacy—rural residents consumption level” and taking consumption literacy as the mediator variable. The results demonstrate that, with other conditions unchanged, internet use has significantly improved the consumption level of rural residents. The mediating effect of the consumption literacy accounts for 15.08% among the entire effect of internet use on the rural residents’ consumption level. Therefore, when applying digital information technology to improve the consumption level of rural residents in future, we should not only continue to increase investment in the construction of communication infrastructure in rural areas, but also continuously improve the consumption literacy of rural residents through building a multi-level complementary consumption education system and expanding the ways of consumption education and training.