Divide or bridge? The heterogeneous effects of digital village participation on rural residents' happiness.

Authors

Zhou Ren, Cancan Zhang, Jingbo Li, MengYuan Yao, Long Fan

Published in

Frontiers in psychology. Volume 17. Pages 1893504. Epub Sep 18, 2026.

Abstract

Enhancing rural residents' happiness is a key objective of China's rural revitalization strategy.
Using data from the China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS), this study empirically examines the relationship between digital village participation on rural residents' happiness.
The results show that digital village participation is positively associated with rural residents' happiness. Dimensional-specific analyses further reveals that digital infrastructure, digital governance, and the digitalization of daily life exert significant positive effects on rural residents' happiness, whereas the effect of rural economic digitalization is statistically insignificant. The mechanism analysis indicates that digital village participation improves rural residents' happiness by alleviating credit constraints and increasing social interaction. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that rural residents with higher digital literacy are better able to translate digital participation into gains in happiness, whereas the effect is insignificant among those with lower levels of digital literacy.
This study provides empirical evidence for narrowing the rural digital divide and offers policy implications for promoting targeted and differentiated digital village development.

PMID:
42827476
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 03 Oct 2026.

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