1. Introduction
In the 21st century, humanity faces three main challenges, two of which are directly related to food: “Matching the rapidly changing demand for food from an increasingly larger and more affluent population to its supply” and “Ensuring that the world’s poorest people are no longer hungry” [
1]. To overcome these challenges, the United Nations’ post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda has identified one of the critical indicators for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set for 2030—that is, hunger eradication [
2]. However, since 2014, the number of people experiencing food insecurity has been increasing. As per the Global Food Crisis Report 2020, released by the Global Food Crisis Network, 135 million people across 55 countries and regions faced severe food insecurity up until the end of 2019. If this trend persists, achieving the zero hunger and poverty goals by 2030 will be impossible [
3]. Hence, ensuring a sufficient food supply for the global population continues to be a major challenge worldwide.
Sufficient cultivated land is a well-recognized factor in ensuring food security [
4]. However, with gradually increasing urbanization, the abandonment of cultivated land has emerged as a critical impediment to the world’s economic development [
5]. Early farmland abandonment occurred in developed countries such as Europe, the United States, Australia, and Japan, and it is also becoming increasingly serious in regions like China, Latin America, and Southeast Asia [
6]. This phenomenon has exacerbated the challenge of addressing the global food security crisis. Consequently, investigating the reasons for the abandonment of arable land has become a focal point of research in disciplines like geography and economics. Current studies have focused predominantly on the migration of labor force from rural to urban areas [
7], the reduction in net income from land use [
8], and the enhancement and commercialization of agricultural technology [
9]. However, few of the studies have investigated the co-occurrence of farming households’ participation in e-commerce with farmland abandonment.
The literature on the co-occurrence of farming households’ e-commerce participation with farmland abandonment can be categorized into two types: (1) Direct studies, in which, to our knowledge, only one study by Wang et al. [
10] discussed the co-occurrence of rural e-commerce proliferation with farmland abandonment by farming households. According to these studies, the spread of rural e-commerce helps curb farmland abandonment, which is attributable to the return of agricultural labor to rural areas, the development of rural industries, and the establishment of a robust land transfer system. Hence, these studies lay a robust foundation for our exploration of the co-occurrence of e-commerce participation by farming households with farmland abandonment. (2) Indirect studies have, instead, discussed the impact of e-commerce development on agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, which can be summarized as follows. The first is the impact of e-commerce development on farmers’ income, representing a contentious issue in current research. Some scholars argue that e-commerce significantly boosts the average income of farmers [
11,
12], but others believe that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between e-commerce and farmers’ income [
13]. The second most widely discussed topic is the impact of e-commerce on rural industrial structure [
14,
15]. Some researchers, including Tao et al. [
16], hold the belief that e-commerce in rural areas optimizes the non-agricultural industry structure and promotes a shift to tertiary industries at the county level. The third is the effect of e-commerce on agricultural production [
17,
18], which remains controversial. Some scholars believe that e-commerce promotes agricultural production by enhancing the market participation of agricultural products and optimizing production strategies [
19]; however, others believe that e-commerce squeezes the space available to agricultural production by creating more non-agricultural job opportunities [
20].
The existing literature provides a solid foundation for the successful conduct of our study; however, several issues remain to be resolved. (1) Quantitative research on the relationship between rural e-commerce and farmland abandonment remains relatively scarce. Many developing countries’ governments and international NGOs have considered developing rural e-commerce as a promising approach to improve rural economies, and the Chinese government has identified rural e-commerce development as a key driver of rural revitalization. Increasing farmers’ income is one of the goals of rural revitalization policies. Whether this will affect farmland abandonment has become a new perspective and issue for us to understand rural revitalization. The impact of the internet and information technology on farmland abandonment has also been discussed by various scholars. For example, Deng et al. have discussed the impact of internet use by rural households on farmland abandonment [
21], which serves as a reference for our research. (2) Limited studies have examined the co-occurrence of e-commerce participation from the micro-perspective of farming households with farmland abandonment. Wang et al. [
10] have discussed the impact of rural e-commerce proliferation on farmland abandonment from a broader perspective, providing a robust basis for our study; however, farmland abandonment is the result of a nested-structure activity involving plots, farming households, and villages [
22]. Exploring the co-occurrence of farming households’ e-commerce participation with farmland abandonment holds a significant value. (3) Farmland abandonment has not been comprehensively and precisely estimated yet. Though a consensus on the concept of farmland abandonment has not been established, most scholars agree with its division into explicit and implicit forms. Explicit abandonment refers to deliberately leaving land fallow and unproductive, whereas implicit abandonment refers to underutilization of the land as a result of inefficient and extensive management [
23]. Among these, the implicit abandonment of farmlands has been largely overlooked. Theoretically, implicit abandonment could evolve into persistent abandonment [
24]; however, in practice, under strict farmland protection policies, land sentiment, and in the pursuit of agricultural subsidies, some farming households tend to engage in extensive farming practices, which lead to implicit abandonment. Quantitative studies focusing on implicit abandonment are scarce because of the difficulty in its quantification. Additionally, explicit abandonment by farming households might have been underestimated. Moreover, its frequency is rare owing to China’s strict farmland protection policies and the application of remote sensing technology in the country. In some cases, farmers often choose to underreport or not report explicit farmland abandonment to avoid penalties. Thus, existing studies relying on survey data to gather information on explicit abandonment by farmers may underestimate the extent of explicit farmland abandonment. To address the aforementioned issues, this study explores the co-occurrence of Chinese farming households’ participation in e-commerce with farmland abandonment, with a focus on distinguishing between explicit and implicit farmland abandonment. The reasons for choosing Chinese farming households as the research subject are primarily the following: (1) In China, the experimental conditions for observing the relationship between rural e-commerce usage and farmland abandonment from the micro-perspective of farming households are excellent. Historically, China is an agriculture-dominated country, with its average rural households possessing only 0.38 hectares of farmland, which is below the global average level [
25]. This makes it a typical country with a significant contradiction between its population and the available land resources [
19]. In order to ultimately achieve food security, rural development, and prosperity for farmers, China implemented the e-commerce demonstration county policy in 2014. Undoubtedly, China’s e-commerce participation and the situation of farmland abandonment provide favorable conditions for our study. (2) Small-scale farmers (smallholders) are the mainstay of China’s agricultural production and are involved in decision making for land use. Since the implementation of the household responsibility system, farming households have become the basic unit of land use in China. According to data from China’s third national agricultural census, smallholders account for over 98% of agricultural operators and manage 70% of the total cultivated land area. Furthermore, farming households serve as the main decision-making entity for choosing land use methods. These data suggest that farming households hold a vital position in China’s agricultural production and are pivotal in decisions regarding household land use, providing a practical basis for discussing the co-occurrence of e-commerce participation with farmland abandonment from the perspective of farming households.
Therefore, this study utilizes data from a survey of 3831 farming households across 10 provinces in China in 2020 to discuss the relationship between farming households’ e-commerce participation and farmland abandonment. This approach includes the following queries: (1) Is there a co-occurrence between the e-commerce participation of farming households and ] farmland abandonment? This question pertains to both explicit and implicit farmland abandonment. (2) What associations exist between farming households’ e-commerce participation and farmland abandonment? What specific patterns or correlations can be observed? (3) In what aspects can the heterogeneity of the co-occurrence between the e-commerce participation of farming households and farmland abandonment be observed?
The main contributions of this study are as follows: (1) It explores the nature and patterns of the association between e-commerce participation by farming households and farmland abandonment from a micro-perspective, thereby contributing to the literature on the relationship between rural e-commerce and farmland abandonment. (2) It measures explicit and implicit abandonment through calculations rather than direct inquiries, thereby offering a more precise and multidimensional measurement of farmland abandonment among farming households. (3) It utilizes the latest national survey data of 2020 for a statistical analysis, thus providing data support to analyze the extent of e-commerce participation among Chinese farming households at present, the current state of farmland abandonment, and their interrelation. (4) This study presents robust conclusions on the relationship between e-commerce and land use changes from the perspective of farming households, which are crucial for ensuring food security in developing countries like China. Given the higher prevalence of farmland abandonment in developed countries, the findings of this study might also be applicable to developed nations.
2. Theoretical Analysis Section
The nature and patterns of the association between e-commerce participation by farming households and farmland abandonment is complex. Traditional research considers farmers to be rational, following Schultz’s viewpoint that rational farmers allocate labor and land resources to maximize income [
26]. However, modern economics and sociology suggest that farmers’ decision making is not solely rational but also influenced by social, political, and other factors [
27]. Considering the universal applicability and simplicity of rational decision-making theory, this study primarily analyzes rural households’ land use decisions based on the rationality assumption. Evidently, changes in land use stem from variations in the potential uses of land and their comparative returns [
28]; if the returns from cultivation are lower than those from other activities, farmers tend to shift their labor to other areas. In the case of challenges or uncertainties in implementing alternatives like land transfer, contracting out cultivation, or switching to different crops, farmers may opt to abandon their farmland [
29]. Thus, in this study, nature and patterns of the association between e-commerce participation by farming households and farmland abandonment have been analyzed from three dimensions, namely, planting income, agricultural labor, and land transfer. For these analyses, this study establishes a theoretical analysis framework (
Figure 1).
As shown in
Figure 1, farming households’ participation in e-commerce might reduce planting income [
20], thereby exacerbating farmland abandonment. It is generally believed that farming households’ e-commerce participation increases product sales by enhancing information gathering capabilities, which contribute to increasing the household income [
30]. Conversely, Zhang [
20] asserted that the increased income achieved through households’ e-commerce participation is mostly derived from non-agricultural sources, potentially “crowding out” the agricultural operating income (including income from crop cultivation). Some studies have documented the increase in the opportunity cost of farming as the fundamental cause of farmland abandonment [
31], which refers to the planting income being lower than other sources of income. For example, with increasing urbanization and industrialization in China, the degree of diversification in Chinese farming households’ livelihoods has increased. This implies that agriculture is no longer the main means of subsistence for these households [
32]. This shift in income source has led to farmland abandonment in some areas [
33]. Therefore, farming households’ e-commerce participation might suppress planting income, leading to an increase in farmland abandonment.
Furthermore, participation in e-commerce leads to changes in agricultural labor in farming households [
14], which, in turn, affect farmland abandonment. How e-commerce participation affects households’ agricultural labor has long been a topic of debate. For instance, Chen et al. [
34] argued that the development of e-commerce has promoted the growth of non-agricultural employment in rural arear, while Wang et al. [
10] opined that e-commerce development has contributed to the migration of more people to rural areas. The impact of agricultural labor migration within families on farmland abandonment also remains controversial. According to a study, for every 10% increase in non-agricultural employment, the average probability of farmland abandonment by farming households increases by 4% [
5]. Yet, another group of scholars asserted that labor migration does not affect agricultural production; rather, it can effectively curb farmland abandonment through land transfer and intensive production [
35]. Regardless of these contradictory results, existing research concurs in that farming households’ e-commerce participation leads to changes in their agricultural labor, which is a direct cause of farmland abandonment.
Farming households’ participation in e-commerce also promotes land transfer between different families [
36], thereby reducing farmland abandonment. Owing to its powerful information dissemination capabilities, along with technological advancement, e-commerce has transformed land transfer from a mere institutional arrangement into an innovation. Land transfer among Chinese farming households is hampered by issues such as poor information flow and high transaction costs [
37]. In response, e-commerce, based on internet platforms, has emerged as a powerful tool that breaks geographical barriers across trading parties, lowers information costs, and, thus, facilitates land transfers. Qin et al. [
38] opined that the higher the level of e-commerce development, the greater the likelihood of land transfer among farming households. Several studies have confirmed that land transfer mitigates farmland abandonment [
39], which implies that land resources are transferrable from low-productivity to high-productivity farming households, thereby achieving a Pareto improvement in land resource allocation [
40], eventually mitigating farmland abandonment among farming households.
In summary, severe food security problems are prevalent not only in developed countries but also in developing countries, and e-commerce has been identified to play a pivotal role in ensuring the stability of agricultural product prices and supply capabilities. E-commerce has developed rapidly since its inception; global e-commerce sales reached $5.2 trillion in 2021 and are expected to exceed $8 trillion by 2026. Farmland abandonment poses a substantial threat to food security. Thus, exploring the co-occurrence of the e-commerce participation of farming households with farmland abandonment has emerged as a new direction of research. Given the multifaceted effect of farming households’ e-commerce participation on farmland abandonment, this study performs a quantitative analysis based on a large-scale survey in China to better understand the co-occurrence of the e-commerce participation of farming households with farmland abandonment, providing crucial insights for addressing the global food security issue.
5. Discussion
5.1. Conclusions and Discussion
Based on survey data from 3831 rural households across 10 provinces in China and guided by the Rational Peasant Theory, this study constructs the following theoretical framework: “E-commerce Participation by Farming Households–Family–Farmland Abandonment”. This study also empirically explores the association between e-commerce participation and farmland abandonment, including the underlying patterns. The main conclusions are as follows:
(1) Farming households’ participation in e-commerce significantly exacerbates farmland abandonment. Specifically, it increases the probability of implicit abandonment by 10.3% and the rate of explicit abandonment by 28.5%. Currently, there are no studies directly discussing the relationship between e-commerce participation at the household level and farmland abandonment. Wang et al. suggest that the widespread adoption of e-commerce at the village level can significantly inhibit farmland abandonment [
10], which appears to be contrary to our research findings. A possible explanation we offer is that, at the village level, mechanisms such as land transfer can mitigate the overall farmland abandonment rate, a solution which is more challenging to implement at the household level.
(2) Regarding nature and patterns, participation in e-commerce significantly boosts the income from forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery sectors but notably suppresses the planting income. Additionally, it significantly reduces the proportion of non-agricultural labor. Acting rationally, households shift this non-agricultural labor to more lucrative sectors such as forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries. Under fixed household labor constraints, this shift naturally causes a reduction in labor for planting, forcing some households to abandon farming (explicit abandonment) and others, who wish to maintain cultivation, to reduce their effective labor input, thereby increasing farmland abandonment (implicit abandonment). Land transfer can help mitigate the association between e-commerce participation by households and the occurrence of implicit abandonment. This result aligns with existing research indicating that the development of rural e-commerce has increased farmers’ income [
11,
30], but our study further finds that this income growth does not stem from planting but rather from forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries. Additionally, our findings, consistent with Wang et al. [
10]’s, show that rural e-commerce development attracts more labor to return to rural areas. In this process, land transfer can mitigate the implicit land abandonment associated with households’ participation in e-commerce, which is generally in agreement with existing studies suggesting that land transfer helps to alleviate farmland abandonment [
25].
(3) From the perspective of heterogeneous effects, agricultural subsidy policies have exacerbated the increase in farmland abandonment associated with farmers’ participation in e-commerce, consistent with Wang et al.’s findings [
25]. The reason might be that agricultural subsidies are more likely to be obtained by land contractors, thereby increasing operational costs and leading to land abandonment. Family farms effectively mitigate this effect, reinforcing Jin et al.’s research, which highlighted the role of family farms in alleviating land abandonment [
56]. There is no heterogeneity in the co-occurrence between e-commerce participation of farming households and explicit abandonment with higher per capita incomes, whereas, in regions with lower per capita incomes, e-commerce participation significantly increases implicit abandonment. This lack of heterogeneity might be related to the weak infrastructure in economically underdeveloped areas [
22].
5.2. Policy Recommendations
In developing countries, the development of e-commerce provides a novel approach to addressing the global food security concern from the perspective of farmland abandonment. However, our research suggests the need to exercise caution in developing e-commerce in rural areas. We noted that participation in e-commerce exacerbates both implicit and explicit farmland abandonment at the household level. Based on the findings of the above study, to better understand the association between increased farmland abandonment and farmers’ participation in e-commerce while also considering the economic development levels and specific conditions of different regions, this paper proposes the following countermeasures and recommendations:
(1) The participation of farmers in e-commerce may exacerbate the issue of farmland abandonment, a situation more likely to occur in regions with uneven resource distribution and areas with rapid non-agricultural labor transfer. To address these areas, more targeted policy interventions are necessary, such as devising policies to enhance the income of farmers not involved in e-commerce, in order to reduce the incidence of farmland abandonment. Additionally, there is a need to particularly strengthen the construction of agricultural production infrastructure in economically underdeveloped areas to prevent local shortages in planting labor caused by e-commerce development.
(2) Develop policies tailored to different regions. For areas with a lower per capita income, it is recommended to formulate policies that support farmers’ participation in e-commerce while also enhancing the attractiveness and sustainability of agriculture. For example, providing agricultural technology training, increasing agricultural subsidies, and optimizing the land transfer mechanism are a few of these strategies. For areas with a higher per capita income, considering that participation in e-commerce is minimally associated with explicit farmland abandonment, policies can focus more on improving agricultural production efficiency and promoting the upward channel of agricultural products.
(3) Actively promote the construction of family farms. By highlighting the positive role of family farms in curbing farmland abandonment, in this paper, it is suggested to popularize the family farm model. By providing entrepreneurship guidance, loan support, and facilitating market access, more farmers are encouraged to adopt family farm operations, thereby enhancing the specialization and scale of agricultural production.
(4) Continuously improve the land transfer system. By simplifying the transfer procedures, increasing the transparency and security of land transfers, one would encourage farmers to transfer idle farmland to willing and capable farmers or enterprises, thereby reducing the rate of farmland abandonment.
It should be noted that the conclusions of this study are based on the specific geographical and socio-economic environment of China. These conclusions and their policy recommendations provide valuable insights for other regions, but, when extending them to other areas, it is necessary to consider the differences in the economic development levels, the agricultural structures, the prevalence of e-commerce, and the policy environments. Different regions need to take these differences into account when formulating policies, especially in cross-national comparisons and policy learning, requiring a careful assessment of the specific circumstances of each area.
5.3. Limitations and Future Prospects
This study has certain limitations that future research could further explore. Specifically, (1) this study mainly discusses the co-occurrence of the e-commerce participation of farming households with farmland abandonment from the perspective of farmers, but factors such as farmers and villages are all contributors to farmland abandonment. Future research could further discuss the impact of e-commerce participation on farmland abandonment under the joint effects of farmers and villages. (2) This study is primarily based on rational assumptions, but it must be acknowledged that farmers’ decision making could be a complex result of both rational and irrational influences. For example, the low rate of land transfer among Chinese farmers is significantly influenced by their special emotional attachment to the land. Future studies could further explore cultural, emotional, and political factors to develop a more comprehensive understanding of farmers’ land use decisions. (3) Due to the constraints of data availability, this study relies on cross-sectional data to examine the co-occurrence of e-commerce participation by farming households with farmland abandonment. While we have endeavored to address various potential endogeneity concerns through the strategic use of control variables and instrumental variables, it is important to acknowledge the inherent limitations of cross-sectional data in capturing dynamic relationship changes. Additionally, it must be noted that, although our findings might suggest a potential causal relationship, the available data do not suffice to conclusively prove such a relationship. To overcome these limitations and gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics at play, future research should consider employing panel data, which would allow for a more thorough exploration of these dynamics. Furthermore, conducting field surveys and gathering firsthand data could offer a more precise insight into the causal relationship and the dynamic changes between farmers’ participation in e-commerce and farmland abandonment. This approach would not only enhance the robustness of the findings but also contribute significantly to the academic discourse on the subject.