作者简介

作者：王瑜

单位：中国社会科学院农村发展研究所

With the increasing penetration of internet applications, there has been a growing interest in the social and economic effects of the internet among the public and academia. By breaking through market segmentation and broadening market access, e-commerce has emerged as a new channel for reducing poverty. Thriving e-commerce in China offers new experience for unraveling the effects of internet applications. Some studies suggest that e-commerce participation significantly boosts farmer households’ incomes (Lu and Liao, 2016; Zeng, et al., 2018). Such income growth stems from the falling price of perishable farm produce thanks to effective information supply (Xu, et al., 2013). E-commerce allows professional farmer households to earn a significantly higher income by increasing profit margin and sales (Zeng, et al. 2018).

Yet most samples employed in existing studies are collected from “Taobao villages” where e-commerce merchants flourish on Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce platform (Zeng, 2018), e-commerce hotspot regions (Lu and Liao, 2016) or specific agricultural sectors (Zeng, et al., 2018; Xu et al., 2013). As such, their research conclusions may not apply to average rural households, especially poor households, in ordinary rural regions. Despite the growing public interest in recent years, few empirical studies have been carried out to examine the poverty reduction effects of e-commerce. Existing discussions on this topic are focused on the basic concepts and models. The extent to which e-commerce delivers economic opportunities to participants is yet to be examined, and is of great relevance to China’s “people-centered” development and the commitment to give people a “sense of gain.” Hence, this paper aims to reveal rural households’ sense of economic gain from e-commerce participation and whether such economic gains differ between poor and non-poor households.

With “sense of economic gain” as an outcome variable, this paper measures the inclusiveness of e-commerce participation by the following indicators, including “Self-evaluated income level relative to other households in the village,” and “Percentage of expected household income increase/decrease in 2018 over 2017.” Based on the nationwide village and household surveys conducted by the China Institute for Rural Studies (CIRS) at Tsinghua University in the summer of 2017, this paper identifies 6,242 rural households who have answered all questions in the surveys (together with their village conditions) to evaluate the effects of e-commerce participation on sense of economic gain. Compared with existing studies, this paper offers the following contributions: (i) It has extended the scope of research on the effects of e-commerce from specialized e-commerce villages to ordinary villagers and from professional farmer households to ordinary farmer households, including poor and non-poor households; (ii) it offers the first evaluation of the perceived economic benefits to e-commerce merchants in terms of relative income growth and future income expectation.

This paper employs the propensity score matching (PSM) method to evaluate rural households’ sense of economic gain from e-commerce participation relative to their fellow villagers and in terms of their future income growth expectation under a counterfactual framework. Findings indicate that e-commerce participation has increased sample households’ sense of economic gain both relative to their fellow villagers and in terms of their future income growth expectation. However, the results differ between poor and non-poor households. While poor households reported a more substantial income growth relative to their fellow villagers, they had little expectation for income growth over a longer time horizon. Only the non-poor households expected e-commerce participation to generate a long-lasting effect on their future income growth.

This evaluation result is consistent with the effect of external support targeted at poor households in the course of China’s fight against poverty. It is also consistent with the actual picture of the lack of endogenous momentum for poor populations. As a new internet business model, e-commerce is widely expected to contribute to poverty reduction in China. Yet policy makers must assess whether e-commerce participation will help poor households develop competence essential for earning a livelihood in the long run. The results of this research indicate that the effects of sense of economic gain from e-commerce participation are different between poor and non-poor households on various dimensions. Discussions on pro-poor e-commerce cannot be generalized or one-sided. Pro-poor e-commerce must address the root cause of poverty beyond short-term benefits to poor households. The sustainability and quality of e-commerce’s pro-poor effects are yet to be further observed and examined. For poor households, the lack of skills presents a more prominent challenge to their long-term income growth expectation. For policymakers and private sectors, pro-poor e-commerce must focus on building capacity for poor households to benefit from e-commerce in the long run as an inclusive technology. This paper’s conclusions are worth referencing for various poverty reduction initiatives, including e-commerce programs for the poor.

伴随互联网应用扩展，网络对经济社会的影响越来越受到社会和学界的重视，电商亦在电商扶贫的热潮中被视为贫困群体突破原有市场分割、更充分对接大市场从而实现脱贫的新型理想渠道。就中国经验来看，电商的急剧发展对认识互联网应用扩张的作用提供了新的经验。但既有研究的样本主要集中在电商集聚的淘宝村、电商竞争力排名靠前的地域或者某类特定农产品领域，研究结论未必适用于普通地区或一般农户，尤其是贫困户。

相较于近年来不断升温的舆论热度，一方面，电商扶贫领域的实证研究相对稀少，主要集中于理念介绍、模式探讨等方面；另一方面，电商发展是否提升参与主体的经济获得感，有待进一步考察。文章旨在探究农户是否从电商参与中提升经济获得感，以及贫困户与非贫困户在电商参与中的经济获得感效应是否存在差异。

文章使用清华大学2017年非概率抽样调查中的6242户农户及对应村级数据，在“反事实框架”下使用倾向值匹配法评估了电商参与对农户横向现实、纵向预期两种维度经济获得感的处置效应，并对贫困户和非贫困户展开分组比较。评估结果表明，电商参与对样本农户两个维度的经济获得感均有显著的提升效应，但贫困户和非贫困户在两个维度经济获得感方面的差异性有所不同：横向现实经济获得感方面，电商参与给贫困户带来的提升效应比非贫困户更大；纵向预期经济获得感方面，其提升效应仅限于非贫困户，而对贫困户几乎没有提升效应。

研究结果与现阶段脱贫攻坚过程中对贫困户定向的、集中的外部扶持所形成的效果较为一致，也与当前贫困人口普遍缺乏内生动力的现实障碍相一致。互联网带来新业态、新通道，电商扶贫作为精准扶贫的重要工程，被寄予了改变贫困人口脱贫路径的希望，但电商参与对农户尤其是贫困户的影响，是否能超脱普遍化的扶贫困境和内生动力缺乏的障碍，尚需审慎评估。

研究结果表明，电商参与的经济获得感效应在贫困户和非贫困户间存在不同维度上的效应差异，电商扶贫机制的探讨需要避免笼统或片面的分析，并结合贫困的根本性矛盾，在实践和研究的互动中将电商扶贫推向系统化和深入化。一方面，电商扶贫对贫困户作用的可持续性及其质量，有待进一步观察和分析。另一方面，贫困户的发展动能和预期困境是当前更为突出的矛盾。由此，对于政府制定政策或者企业等社会力量参与电商扶贫而言，依然要着眼于贫困户能力的改变，为技术普惠性奠定能力可及性的根基。本文的结论对包括电商扶贫在内的各类扶贫举措具有参考意义。