Research On Farmers’ Adoption Behavior Of Agricultural Products Sold By E-Commerce And Its Impact

In recent years,E-commerce has developed very rapidly in China,and agricultural products E-commerce enterprises have flourished,however,the development of farmers selling agricultural products through E-commerce has been relatively slow.Taking apple industry as an example,this study uses research data from 685 farmers in Gansu,Shanxi,Henan,and Shandong provinces from 2015 to 2020 to empirically analyze the main factors affecting farmers’ adoption of E-commerce sales of agricultural products and their effects on sales price,sales cost,sales volume,sales revenue,and sales profit,etc.32.7% of the farmers had the experience of adopting Ecommerce to sell apples.Among the 685 sample farmers,only 3.7% of the apples were sold through E-commerce,and 5.4% of the high-quality apples(first-class fruits)were sold through E-commerce.The empirical results showed that: 1)The adoption of Ecommerce sales was significantly influenced by factors such as years of education,membership in cooperatives,Internet availability,and social connections;2)The adoption of E-commerce sales by farmers led to a significant increase of 10.4% in sales price and 12.1% in sales revenue,however,the unit cost of sales increased by 43.2%and the total cost of sales increased by 47.3%,and the sales volume did not increase significantly,nor did it promote the sales volume of high-quality apples,and neither the unit sales profit nor the total profit increased significantly;3)Based on the heterogeneity analysis,it is found that the cost of E-commerce is higher for farmers with small production scale,and the sales profit will be significantly positive only after the sales scale reaches a certain level.It can be seen that the development of agricultural sales is still very slow and the dividends obtained by farmers from the development of E-commerce are not significant.Although the price and gross income of agricultural products sold through E-commerce increase,there is actually no significant change in profits,especially for small-scale farmers.Therefore,this paper proposes the following suggestions: 1)Reduce the cost of farmers’ adoption of E-commerce sales,especially reduce or subsidize the cost of sales logistics,packaging materials and refrigeration costs,and further support farmers’ adoption of E-commerce sales of agricultural products,especially for small-scale farmers;2)Scale up E-commerce sales,and concentrate small farmers through the introduction of cooperatives and franchised enterprises,so as to increase the net profit of farmers’ sales of agricultural products.