1. Introduction
The report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the strategy of “implementing the strategy of giving priority to employment”, emphasizing “establishing a mechanism for promoting entrepreneurship and creating jobs through multiple channels and flexible employment, coordinating urban and rural employment policies, and actively guiding rural labor to find jobs”. In recent years, entrepreneurship has been regarded as a key factor in promoting sustainable economic development due to its role in expanding employment and optimizing the industrial structure [
1]. Therefore, the CPC Central Committee and The State Council attach great importance to innovation and entrepreneurship, especially in the field of rural revitalization. Policy documents such as the Strategic Plan for Rural Revitalization (2018–2022) and the Opinions on Promoting High-quality Development of Business Start-ups in Rural Areas (No. 104, 2020) have been issued in succession, greatly increasing farmers’ enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and driving the flow and convergence of production factors such as technology, talent and capital to rural areas. By March 2022, more than 11.2 million people had returned to their hometowns to start businesses, and remarkable progress had been made in rural innovation and entrepreneurship. However, entrepreneurship is a process in which entrepreneurs identify entrepreneurial opportunities and integrate and utilize resources to achieve opportunity value creation [
2]. As a special entrepreneurial group, rural households have distinct internal limitations and external constraints, which are mainly reflected in blocked information sources, severe constraints on entrepreneurial resources, and insufficient innovation ability [
3]. The phenomenon of low entrepreneurial quality and low entrepreneurial performance is extremely serious. Therefore, how to help farmers improve their entrepreneurial performance has become the focus of research on rural entrepreneurship under the background of the implementation of rural revitalization strategy.
With the rapid development of the digital economy in China, new digital information technology represented by the Internet rises vigorously and gradually becomes the endogenous power of rural economic development [
4]. For rural households with low entrepreneurial performance, digital economy promotes the increase in entrepreneurial benefits of rural households to a considerable extent by broadening information channels, expanding production and sales modes, and improving financing channels [
5]. It is worth noting that due to the existence of a digital divide, not all entrepreneurial farmers can enjoy digital empowerment in the “reservoir” of the digital economy. According to the Survey and Analysis Report of China’s Rural Digital Literacy under the Background of Rural Revitalization Strategy, the Internet penetration rate in rural China reached 57.6% in 2021, and the gap between urban and rural digital infrastructure narrowed significantly, while the score of rural digital literacy was only 18.6, lower than the average of 57%. It can be seen that the current digital divide problem has shifted from the access gap to the digital literacy gap. However, relevant studies have found that having a certain degree of digital literacy is a prerequisite for individuals to integrate into the digital society, enjoy digital dividends, and open up space for entrepreneurship, employment, and income increase, and farmers are no exception [
6]. In other words, the digital literacy underlying the accessibility of digital technology is the key to influencing the entrepreneurial behavior and performance of rural households in the period of “digital revolution”. According to this logic, the digital literacy of rural households is closely related to entrepreneurial performance. In what way does digital literacy affect the entrepreneurial performance of rural households? And how can rural households’ digital literacy be improved to improve their entrepreneurial performance? Exploring this problem is helpful to effectively cultivate rural households’ digital literacy, help rural households master and apply digital technologies and skills in the process of entrepreneurship, and thus promote the improvement of rural households’ entrepreneurial performance.
As digital literacy plays an increasingly important role in farmers’ production and life, relevant scholars have conducted research on its driving effect. For example, Lanlan and Yanling (2022) empirically tested the positive impact of farmers’ digital literacy on their overall participation in rural digital governance [
7]. Honggen et al. (2022) believe that digital literacy can help improve rural residents’ willingness to classify household garbage and encourage them to actively practice garbage classification behavior [
8]. From the perspective of common prosperity, Depeng et al. (2022) found that digital literacy can promote the accumulation of farmers’ property income [
9]. In addition, some studies have indirectly investigated the impact of digital literacy and peasant household entrepreneurship. Jie et al. (2022) discussed that the promotion of digital literacy can help improve the entrepreneurial activities of rural residents and alleviate multidimensional relative poverty [
10]. Dunping et al. (2022) believe that returning home to start businesses can alleviate the multidimensional relative poverty of rural households by improving their digital literacy [
11]. Xiaojing et al. (2022) found that digital literacy has a positive impact on farmers’ entrepreneurial behavior, and such an impact has a significant positive spatial spillover effect [
12]. However, current academic discussions on digital literacy mostly focus on rural governance, multidimensional poverty of rural households, etc., and the role of digital literacy in the field of entrepreneurship has not been deeply discussed. Even though a few empirical studies confirm that digital literacy has a positive effect on rural households’ entrepreneurial behaviors, however, it remains to be further explored how to influence the entrepreneurial performance of farmers.
In view of the above problems and the lack of research, this paper uses the micro-survey data of farmers in Jiangsu Province in 2022 to investigate the digital literacy of entrepreneurial farmers from three dimensions: digital cognitive identification, digital evaluation application, and digital communication sharing, based on the basic connotation of farmers’ production and living conditions and literacy. Centering on the core issue of how digital literacy promotes the improvement of rural household entrepreneurial performance, this paper introduces entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial opportunity identification into the research framework according to the logical chain of “resource–opportunity–performance” and explores the mediating and chain-mediating roles of the two in the relationship between rural household digital literacy and entrepreneurial performance, in order to reveal the intermediate transformation path of digital literacy affecting rural household entrepreneurial performance. To enrich the literature in the field of the digital literacy driving effect and improve the existing research results on entrepreneurial performance, it also inspires the government and entrepreneurial farmers to pay attention to the cultivation of digital literacy and provides theoretical references and practical suggestions for entrepreneurial farmers to better realize digital technology-enabled entrepreneurship.
5. Discussion
First of all, according to the Timmons entrepreneurial factors model theory, entrepreneurial activities cannot be separated from three basic elements: entrepreneur, entrepreneurial opportunity, and entrepreneurial resources. Based on this theory, the entrepreneurial performance of farmers is the result of matching and balancing among these three factors. Second, based on the higher-order theory, when facing the organizational situation, entrepreneurs will have an impact on the resources, opportunities, and strategies of the enterprise according to their personal characteristics within their limited vision, thus affecting the outcome output of the result. Finally, the resource-based theory points out that the availability of resources possessed by enterprises affects the richness of the entrepreneurial opportunity set to a considerable extent. Combined with the higher-order theory, the resource-based theory, and the Timmons entrepreneurial factor model theory, this study analyzed the effect mechanism of rural households’ digital literacy on entrepreneurial performance. Based on the theory logic of “resource–opportunity–performance”, entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial opportunity identification were introduced, and a chain intermediary model was constructed. The hierarchical regression analysis and the bootstrap method were used to test the impact of rural households’ digital literacy on entrepreneurial performance and the intermediary and chain intermediary effects of entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial opportunity identification.
Through theoretical analysis and empirical tests, the following conclusions are drawn: (1) Rural households’ digital literacy had a significant positive impact on their entrepreneurial performance. This means that the higher the digital literacy of farmers, the more likely to improve the entrepreneurial performance. (2) Digital literacy mediated the entrepreneurial performance of farmers through entrepreneurial bricolage. Digital literacy can promote and help farmers to piece together and reorganize existing resources at hand and increase heterogeneous resources and thus can help farmers to obtain competitive advantages and bring about changes in entrepreneurial performance. (3) Digital literacy mediated the entrepreneurial performance of farmers with entrepreneurial opportunity identification. High digital literacy can help farmers to accurately identify various entrepreneurial opportunities, identify and evaluate these opportunities in a timely manner, and ultimately improve entrepreneurial performance. (4) The effect of digital literacy and the entrepreneurial performance of rural households were not separable from each other. That is, digital literacy promoted the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities by influencing the entrepreneurial bricolage process of rural households, thus affecting the entrepreneurial performance of the rural households.
6. Conclusions
6.1. Theoretical Contribution
First of all, most of the existing literature uses “whether” to describe the impact of the accessibility of digital information technology such as the Internet on entrepreneurship. However, with the narrowing of the differences in the accessibility of digital technology in the information age, whether the application ability of digital technology affects entrepreneurship has become the current research focus. From the perspective of digital literacy, this study selected three dimensions of digital cognitive identification, digital evaluation application, and digital communication sharing to accurately quantify the digital literacy of farmers and tested the impact of digital literacy on the entrepreneurial performance of farmers at the micro level, enriching the empirical research on the drive of digital information technology to farmers’ entrepreneurship. At the same time, it provided an important supplement to the explanation path of traditional entrepreneurship theory. Second, previous studies have indirectly investigated the positive relationship between digital literacy and entrepreneurial performance, ignoring the specific influence path. This paper explored the influence mechanism of digital literacy on the entrepreneurial performance of farmers from two approaches of entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial opportunity identification, systematically and comprehensively explained the influence process and internal mechanism of digital literacy on the entrepreneurial performance of farmers, further improved the investigation of the outcome variables of digital literacy, and enriched the research content in the field of digital literacy driving effect. Finally, this paper confirmed that digital literacy can promote the entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial opportunity identification of rural households, expanded the research on the pre-influencing factors of entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial opportunity identification under the background of digital economy, and further enriched the theoretical mechanism of entrepreneurial bricolage, entrepreneurial opportunity identification, and digital literacy. In addition, current academic research focuses on factors such as social networks and the entrepreneurial ability of entrepreneurial subjects. This paper discussed the influence of digital literacy on entrepreneurial performance, thus broadening the research on the pre-influencing factors of entrepreneurial performance and providing sufficient theoretical logic and practical guidance for the improvement of entrepreneurial performance of rural households.
6.2. Practical Inspiration
- (1)
Pay attention to the cultivation of rural households’ digital literacy, and realize that digital technology enables rural households to start businesses. First of all, on the basis of constantly improving the construction of digital infrastructure, the government has intensified the training of diversified digital skills, such as opening training courses on the application of e-commerce live broadcasting skills, hiring professionals to train and teach, and holding digital skills competitions, so as to improve the digital literacy of farmers and effectively deal with the problems of the farmers’ lack of knowledge and skills in the face of new technological scenarios. Lay a solid foundation for farmers to carry out entrepreneurial activities. Second, entrepreneurial farmers should take the initiative to improve their own digital literacy, that is, they should have sensitive digital awareness, rich digital knowledge, and superb digital skills, so as to make full use of the information channel effect and social network effect of digital technology, accurately identify entrepreneurial opportunities, piece together and reorganize resources, and thus better obtain competitive advantages and achieve performance improvement.
- (2)
Entrepreneurial farmers should seize digital dividends and effectively use digital technologies to improve entrepreneurial performance. By improving digital literacy, entrepreneurial farmers can make better use of digital technology tools to “make do with” and “reconstruct” resources embedded in social networks or redundant resources at hand, so as to achieve orderly and centralized utilization, so as to reduce resource acquisition costs, enhance their own competitive advantages, and improve entrepreneurial performance. At the same time, entrepreneurial opportunity identification is an effective behavior, and digital literacy promotes the improvement of entrepreneurial performance of rural households. Based on the bricolage resources, entrepreneurial farmers can capture a variety of potential business opportunities and timely evaluate and develop entrepreneurial opportunities to improve entrepreneurial performance, so as to promote the sustainable development of rural economy and society.
6.3. Research limitations and Prospects
Although this study has certain theoretical and practical significance, there are still some shortcomings: (1) This paper confirmed that entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial opportunity identification were important intermediate mechanisms for digital literacy to promote the improvement of rural household entrepreneurial performance, but there may be other pathways between digital literacy and rural household entrepreneurial performance. Other mediating effects can be explored in the future, and the moderating effects of other situational factors (such as environmental dynamics) can be considered. (2) This paper took digital literacy as a single dimension and did not further discuss the relationship between different types of digital literacy and their impact on entrepreneurial performance. In the future, we can study the internal relationship between different types of digital literacy and the incremental effects of their interaction on entrepreneurial performance. (3) In terms of sample size, this study mainly focused on specific regions, while sample quantity, inclusiveness, and representativeness need to be expanded. In the future, samples of farmers in different regions and periods can be collected to improve the universality of the conclusion. (4) Cross-sectional data were used in this paper, without considering the influence of time change on the research results. Therefore, longitudinal analysis can be considered in the future to further confirm the robustness of the relationship between variables.