The impact of digital economy on rural revitalization: Evidence from Guangdong, China

Background: Digital technology and economy have profound impact on rural revitalization and become important initiatives to promote rural development. This study analyzes the spatial effect of digital economy on rural revitalization in Guangdong, China. Method: The entropy weight method is used to evaluate the level of rural revitalization and digital economy in 20 prefecture level cities of Guangdong province during 2011 - 2021. Spatial panel model is used to analyze the spatial spillover effect of digital economy on rural revitalization. Threshold model is employed to analyze the marginal effects of the digital economy on rural revitalization. Heterogeneous analysis is made by grouping the prefecture -level cities into four regions: the Pearl River Delta (PRD), the East Wing, the West Wing and the Mountainous region. Results: Both the level of rural revitalization and digital economy development in every prefecture -level city experienced an increase during 2011 - 2021 and the PRD region take the lead in both the rural revitalization and digital economy. There is significant spatial spillover effect of digital economy on the rural revitalization as a whole (the coefficient is about 0.3537). However, in the regions with a low level of digital economic development, there is a negative impact (-0.1847) of the digital economy on rural revitalization; while in regions with medium or high level of digital economy, it has a significant positive effect (0.3835) on rural revitalization. The impact of digital economy on rural revitalization development is significantly greater in the PRD (0.3141), the East Wing (0.7215), the West Wing (0.5467) than in the mountainous region (0.2238). Conclusions: There is significant spatial differentiation in the digital economy and rural revitalization. The digital economy has significant spatial spillover effect on the rural revitalization. And this effect is found out to have heterogeneous and non-linear characteristics. In order to promote rural revitalization, it is necessary to make full use of the digital economy and technology in rural areas. Besides, it is important to improve the digital skills and literary of the rural population so that the digital economy could play a greater role in rural revitalization.