Gender and Income Effects of Smartphone Use: The Case of Rural China

The diffusion of mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) has important implications for rural economic development. While previous studies have investigated the potential contributions of mobile ICTs to agricultural production and poverty reduction, wider incomes effects of the use of updated ICTs such as smartphones have hardly been analyzed. To bridge this knowledge gap, we analyze the determinants and income effects of smartphone use, using an endogenous switching regression model and building on a household-level survey data from rural China. Our findings indicate that gender, farmers education, farm size, and off-farm work participation are main drivers of smartphone use, and smartphone use increases farm income, off-farm income and household income significantly. Further, we find that the income effects of smartphone use are heterogeneous between the male who use smartphones and work off farm and their female counterparts. Acknowledgement : The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from Lincoln University within the seed fund project (INT5056)