ICT adoption, individual income and psychological health of rural farmers in China

Abstract

This paper examines the joint effects of the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and individual income on farmers’ psychological health, measured by happiness, life satisfaction, stress and loneliness. We employ a two-stage residual inclusion approach combined with a conditional mixed process model to analyse data collected from 7,065 rural households in China. The econometric strategy addresses the potential endogeneity issues of ICT adoption and individual income and captures the possible interdependence between the two variables. The empirical findings reveal that both ICT adoption and high individual income are significantly associated with higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction, but are significantly associated with lower levels of stress and loneliness. Further analysis reveals that there exists a positive interaction effect between farmers’ decision to adopt ICTs and their income.