Abstract:
Social e-commerce sales can improve farmers' market dominant position and broaden agricultural products sales channels. It is a vital means to connect small farms and the large market. Based on the embedding theory and a micro-survey data of 302 winter jujube growers in the facility agricultural production area of Dali County, Shaanxi Province, this paper analyzed the social e-commerce participation behaviors of farmers from the perspective of virtual embedding and explored its impacts on agricultural income and agricultural production input by the endogenous switching regression model and discussed the heterogeneity issues. Results show that 65.6% of farmers have participated in social e-commerce. The number of social software usage, the number of friends in social software, the number of friend class categories, and information release can significantly promote farmers' participation in social e-commerce. While information reception has a negative influence. Farmers' social e-commerce participation will significantly increase agricultural income, with an average of 53, 530 yuan. When the planting area crossed the threshold value of 0.2 hm
2, social e-commerce participation significantly increased agricultural income per unit area. Under the framework of counter-fact analysis, if the non-participating farmers participated in social e-commerce, their agricultural production input would increase by 131, 700 yuan. Agricultural production input is positively affected by farmers' social e-commerce participation and agricultural income, and the promoting effect of agricultural income on agricultural production input has structural heterogeneity. Therefore, to promote the development of rural e-commerce, this paper provides the following suggestions: publicizing typical cases of social e-commerce sales actively, forming a demonstration and leading role, strengthening social e-commerce training and guidance, improving the ability level of farmers, establishing a county-level farmland information exchange platform, and intensifying the quality supervision of agricultural products.