Research On The Impact Of Internet Use On Rural Women’s Entrepreneurship

Encouraging women to start businesses,which can create economic wealth,employment opportunities and get rid of poverty,is an important way to improve women’s social status and promote social progress.In recent years,the Internet economy has created a large number of new jobs and prompted more and more urban and rural residents to embark on the road of self-employment.Many studies have analyzed the relationship between Internet use and entrepreneurship,and there are also studies looking at female entrepreneurship.But at this stage,the academic discussion on how Internet use will promote rural women’s entrepreneurial behavior is not enough.Therefore,this thesis focuses on rural women’s groups,takes entrepreneurship as the entry point,analyzes the impact and the path of action caused by Internet use on rural women’s entrepreneurship,and discusses what measures should be taken to improve the positive effect of the Internet on rural women’s entrepreneurship and encourage more rural women to join entrepreneurial activities in view of the effect of Internet use on rural women’s entrepreneurship.This thesis first summarizes research related to female entrepreneurship and the relationship between Internet use and entrepreneurship,and builds a theoretical framework based on this to analyze how Internet use will affect rural female entrepreneurship and to propose the desired research hypothesis.By analyzing data from the China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)for two years,2016 and 2018,a panel random effects logit model was used to examine the magnitude and path of the effect of Internet use on female entrepreneurship in rural China.Specifically,referring to the way variables were selected in previous studies,this thesis examines the impact of Internet use on rural women’s entrepreneurship by using rural women’s Internet use,length of time spent online,and whether the Internet is used as the main way to obtain information as key explanatory variables,and rural women’s age,marital status,work experience,and physical health status as basic control variables;and further discusses the impact of different Internet use purpose on rural women’s entrepreneurship and the impact of Internet use on different groups of women with different employment status;and discusses the impact paths of Internet use on rural women’s entrepreneurship in terms of three dimensions: access to information,improving social capital,and improving borrowing preferences of formal financial institutions.Finally,according to the results of empirical analysis,the final conclusions are drawn,and the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions.The findings show that,first,Internet use significantly promotes rural women’s entrepreneurship,and rural women who use the Internet at high frequencies are more likely to start their own businesses.Second,the government’s advocacy efforts through the Internet had a significant positive effect on the success of entrepreneurship among rural women in general.In contrast,the relationship between increased frequency of socializing,learning,and entertainment via the Internet and whether rural women started their own businesses was not significant.Third,Internet use will also have an important positive effect on entrepreneurship among the female population at different stages of employment,i.e.,for both the jobless and employed female population,Internet use has an important positive effect on their entrepreneurial behavior.Fourth,an empirical analysis of the impact path of Internet use on rural women’s entrepreneurship found that using Internet use as an important access channel to information sources can increase the probability of rural women’s entrepreneurship by 21.4%.Fifth,Internet use can indirectly contribute to rural women’s entrepreneurial behavior by enhancing their social capital,but the mediating effect of Internet use on improving rural women’s formal borrowing preferences and thus promoting entrepreneurship does not hold true.Based on this,this thesis puts forward the following countermeasure suggestions: first,we should accelerate the improvement of network infrastructure construction in rural areas of China,and promote the popularization of the Internet and the development of information technology;second,we should play a good role in demonstrating and leading the Internet,and strengthen the training of rural women’s Internet information acquisition ability;third,we should pay attention to the integration of the Internet and the real social network in rural areas;fourth,we should guide the function of Internet finance in an orderly manner,and encourage and support rural women’s entrepreneurship.