Study On The Impact Of Internet Use On Rural Household Health

The popularity and application of the Internet has had a profound impact on the way of life of the population.The Internet has the advantage of pooling information,spreading knowledge and building connections.The increasing popularity of the Internet provides convenience and equality of access to information.Health is a prerequisite and foundation for all activities.Maintaining good health is vital to promoting the overall growth of individuals and society,and is a basic prerequisite for achieving economic and social development.Based on the digital divide that may exist between urban and rural areas,and with the gradual spread of the Internet to rural areas,this paper explores how and what impact Internet use has on the health of farming households.Research related to the study of how Internet use affects the health of farming households from a rural perspective has become one of the key focuses of academic research and policy formulation.This paper uses internet use as an entry point to study the impact of internet use on farm household health behaviors using the Health Capital Model,Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory,the Knowing,Believing and Acting Model,and the Health Beliefs Model.Specifically,based on the 2018 China General Social Survey data,this paper uses the order probit model to measure Internet use in two dimensions: whether or not to use the Internet and the extent of Internet use,and to measure farmers’ physical health in three dimensions: farmers’ self-rated physical health,objective physical health and mental health.Using the average internet usage rate in the farmer’s province as an instrumental variable,robustness tests were conducted to prove the baseline regression results,and further case interviews were used to supplement the empirical study.Findings: First,the mechanism suggests that: 1.Internet use has an impact on farmers’ health through knowledge effects.Farmers use the Internet to broaden their access to information through the knowledge effect,gaining a wealth of health knowledge from the Internet,continuously learning and influencing their health.2.Internet use affects farmers’ health through the behavioural effect.Farmers use the Internet to expand their social circle by using social networking software such as We Chat,Weibo,Xiaohongshu and Tik Tok to constantly enrich themselves and improve their health.Secondly,there is a non-linear relationship between the impact of internet use and farmers’ health.Internet use is beneficial for individuals to learn more health-related knowledge and enhance social support,while excessive use of the Internet affects sleep and exercise time and may bring other physical hazards.Thirdly,the analysis of farmer heterogeneity showed that age,education level and gender all contributed to the differentiation of the impact effect.Specifically,Internet use had a significant positive effect on the mental health of older people;among educational attainment,it had a significant positive effect on the mental health of the high school and above group;and among gender,Internet use had a positive effect on the mental health of women.Fourthly,the analysis found that farmers were able to use the Internet to acquire health knowledge and broaden their social channels through case interviews to compensate for the limited nature of the measurement data,further demonstrating that the Internet improved farmers’ health in both knowledge and behavioural effects,and also mentioning in the case that there was a non-linear relationship between the impact of Internet use on health,supporting the empirical findings.Based on the above findings,policy recommendations are proposed to increase the construction of the Internet in rural areas,improve the use of the Internet in rural areas,strengthen the knowledge effect of the Internet,broaden the online social circle,and extend the convenience of social channels.