Digital Rural Construction and County Population Re-turn: A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on the China’s E-Commerce Demonstration Counties Policy

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-507-2_8How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Digital economy; County population return; Quasi-natural experiment; E-Commerce Demonstration Counties

Abstract

Redistributing population and achieving balanced regional development has become a critical socioeconomic challenge. With the popularization of computer technologies such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, the e-commerce platforms in rural areas have become increasingly complete. A quasi-natural experiment constructed based on China’s E-Commerce Demonstration Counties (EDC) policy is used to explore the impact mechanisms of digital rural commerce on county population return. The county-level panel data (2010–2019) and the 2017 floating population dynamic monitoring survey are employed. The research results indicate that: (1) The EDC has a significant promoting effect on population backflow in rural counties. The effect of EDC on population return migration to county towns and townships is more pronounced than to rural areas. (2) The heterogeneity analysis shows that EDC significantly promotes population return migration in less-developed regions, including the central, western, and northeastern areas. However, its impact on population backflow in the more developed eastern region is not significant. Based on results, policies should strengthen returnees’ skills, and advance county-centered urbanization to maximize EDC's impact on return migration.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lingyu Sheng
AU  - Wenbing Zhou
AU  - Naifeng Cui
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/15
TI  - Digital Rural Construction and County Population Re-turn: A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on the China’s E-Commerce Demonstration Counties Policy
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 4th International Conference on Public Management, Digital Economy and Internet Technology (ICPDI 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 74
EP  - 82
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-507-2_8
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-507-2_8
ID  - Sheng2025
ER  -