Abstract:
Enhancing the livelihood resilience of smallholders provides an important foundation for sustaining their income growth, preventing their return to or descent into poverty, and advancing comprehensive rural revitalization. Taking modern agricultural industrial parks as an industrial cluster setting, this study draws on sustainable livelihoods theory and factor allocation theory and uses survey data from 911 smallholder households in Sichuan Province to empirically examine the effects of agricultural digital supply chain finance on smallholder livelihood resilience, as well as the underlying mechanisms and heterogeneity of these effects. The results show that agricultural digital supply chain finance significantly enhances smallholder livelihood resilience, with significant positive effects on buffering capacity, capacity for self organization, and learning capacity. The effect is relatively stronger among smallholders at lower quantiles of livelihood resilience. A higher level of actual use of agricultural digital supply chain finance also contributes to greater livelihood resilience. The mechanism analysis shows that agricultural digital supply chain finance enhances smallholder livelihood resilience by promoting technological upgrading in agricultural production, strengthening supply chain collaboration, and expanding participation in new industries and new forms of business. These pathways facilitate a more intensive, coordinated, and diversified allocation of livelihood factors. The effects are more pronounced in parks with higher shares of secondary and tertiary industries, stronger policy support, and lower levels of land fragmentation, as well as among households with higher shares of nonfarm income and those primarily engaged in cash crop production. Agricultural digital supply chain finance has significant positive effects on smallholders across different farm size groups, with no significant differences between groups, indicating no evident scale exclusion. This study reveals the factor allocation mechanisms and conditions through which agricultural digital supply chain finance affects smallholder livelihood resilience in an industrial cluster setting. The findings provide a reference for optimizing the provision of digital financial services through modern agricultural industrial parks and facilitating the integration of smallholders into modern agriculture.