Rural E-Commerce and Agricultural Carbon Emission Reduction: A Quasi-Natural Experiment from China’s Rural E-Commerce Demonstration County Program Based on 355 Cities in Ten Years

Kaiwen Ji, Qiaoyun Hou, Yi Yu and Dan Pan ()
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Kaiwen Ji: College of Political Science and Law, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China
Qiaoyun Hou: School of Economics, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330013, China
Yi Yu: School of Economics, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330013, China
Dan Pan: School of Economics, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330013, China

Agriculture, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Reducing carbon emissions is of paramount importance to the accomplishment of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The effect of rural e-commerce on agricultural carbon emissions (ACEs) is controversial, and particularly the mechanism behind the effect is unknown. To identify the impact of rural e-commerce on agricultural carbon emissions and its mechanisms, we take advantage of China’s Rural E-Commerce Demonstration County Program (REDCP) as a quasi-natural experiment and use the multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) model to investigate the relationship between rural e-commerce and agricultural carbon emissions. Our data are based on panel data of 355 prefecture-level cities from 2010 to 2019 in China. We identify that rural e-commerce can reduce agricultural carbon emissions by an average of 14.4%, but this effect is not long-lasting. Mechanism analyses suggest that the reduction effect of rural e-commerce on agricultural carbon emissions is mainly due to fostering agricultural economic growth, increasing the share of low-carbon industry, and improving agricultural total factor productivity (TFP). Further heterogeneity analyses demonstrate that rural e-commerce has better carbon emissions reduction performance in eastern cities as well as in non-major grain-producing cities in China.

Keywords: carbon emission reduction; agricultural carbon emission; rural e-commerce; quasi-natural experiment; China’s rural e-commerce demonstration county program (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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