Why Some Farmers Get Left Behind in the Digital Age: New Study Maps the Literacy Divide

The smartphone in a farmer’s pocket can be a portal to precision agriculture, e-commerce, and real-time market prices — or it can be an expensive slab of glass used only for voice calls. A new qualitative study from China, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, offers one of the most systematic micro-level explanations yet for why that difference exists, and why simply handing out devices and internet connections has failed to close the gap. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 Chinese farmers, a research team from Hangzhou Dianzi University and Hangzhou Normal University traces the digital literacy divide not to a single cause but to an interlocking mechanism in which personal characteristics, external conditions, and digitalization willingness reinforce one another over time.

The concept of the digital divide has evolved considerably since researchers first began warning about unequal access to computers in the 1990s. Early scholarship focused on the so-called first-level divide: who had a connection and who did not. As infrastructure spread, attention shifted to a second-level divide in skills and usage, and more recently to a third-level divide concerned with outcomes — who actually converts digital tools into economic and social benefit. Digital literacy sits at the heart of these later divides. It is not merely the ability to switch on a device, but the capacity to search for, evaluate, and apply information; to transact safely online; and to adapt as platforms and applications constantly change. For farming populations, whose livelihoods increasingly depend on digital marketplaces, weather services, and government e-services, this literacy has become a determinant of economic participation.

The Chinese context makes the question especially urgent. Rural China has experienced one of the fastest expansions of digital infrastructure in history, with mobile networks and e-commerce platforms reaching even remote villages. Yet connectivity has not translated uniformly into capability. Older farmers, farmers with limited schooling, and farmers in economically marginal households often remain on the periphery of the digital economy even when the hardware is within arm’s reach. Understanding why requires moving beyond aggregate statistics and listening to how farmers themselves describe their encounters with digital technology — which is precisely what the research team set out to do.

Between June and September 2024, the researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with 30 farmers, mostly in participants’ homes, with some conversations taking place in village committee offices or outdoor public spaces. The interviews followed a qualitative research design, a method chosen because the formation of a literacy divide is a process embedded in lived experience rather than a variable that can be fully captured by a survey questionnaire. Participants were informed of the academic purpose of the study, assured that their data would be used solely for research, and told they could withdraw at any time; all gave verbal consent. The study received ethical approval from the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences of China and was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China under grant number 22AGL025.

From the interview material, the researchers identified three clusters of factors shaping the divide. The first is personal characteristics, which encompass a diverse array of attributes: age, educational attainment, economic conditions, and personality traits. Age matters because digital platforms are largely designed with younger, urban users in mind, and because learning new interfaces becomes more demanding over a lifetime of habituated practice. Education shapes not only familiarity with text-heavy interfaces but also confidence in navigating unfamiliar systems. Economic conditions determine whether a farmer can afford not just a device but the ongoing costs of data, apps, and the trial-and-error time that learning requires. Personality traits — curiosity, tolerance for frustration, willingness to experiment — quietly sort people into learners and avoiders even within the same household.

The second cluster is external conditions, which the study groups into social networks, public support, and demonstration effects. Social networks act as informal learning infrastructures: a neighbor’s teenager who can set up a payment app, a relative who sends voice-note tutorials, or a village group chat where questions get answered can substitute for formal training. Public support refers to institutional resources such as government digital-inclusion programs, library or cooperative training sessions, and accessible customer service. Demonstration effects operate through visible success stories — when a farmer in the village earns visibly higher income by livestreaming produce sales, the perceived payoff of digital skills becomes concrete rather than abstract, lowering the psychological barrier for others to try.

The third and pivotal factor is digitalization willingness, which the researchers describe as a synthesis of the external environment and internal cognition. Willingness is not a fixed personality attribute; it emerges where external conditions make digital tools seem useful, safe, and achievable, and where internal beliefs — self-efficacy, perceived benefit, fear of error — align with that external promise. This is the study’s central analytical move: willingness does not merely sit alongside the other factors as a third independent cause. Instead, it functions as a mediating mechanism, transmitting the influence of both personal characteristics and external conditions onto the actual literacy divide.

The mediating role has important implications for how the divide forms and perpetuates itself. A farmer’s age or education does not mechanically determine digital skill; it does so largely through whether that person comes to want digital engagement in the first place. An older farmer with little schooling who sees peers profiting from a produce-selling app, and who has a family member patient enough to demonstrate it, may develop strong willingness and close much of the skill gap. Conversely, a younger farmer surrounded by discouraging experiences and absent support may conclude that digital tools are irrelevant or risky, and the divide widens despite favorable demographics. The same logic applies to external conditions: infrastructure and programs raise willingness, and willingness converts into literacy. Where the chain breaks — at the level of motivation rather than access — the divide persists even in well-connected villages.

This mechanism helps explain why policy interventions that focus solely on the supply side so often underperform. Subsidized smartphones, expanded broadband, and one-off training workshops address access and, at best, initial exposure. But if the mediating variable — willingness — remains low because farmers see no credible demonstration of benefit, lack supportive social networks, or fear the consequences of making mistakes online, the investment stalls at the level of unused capability. The study’s framework suggests that effective interventions must be sequenced and layered: build visible, locally credible demonstrations of digital benefit; activate existing social networks as channels for peer-to-peer learning rather than relying solely on classroom-style instruction; and design public support that accounts for the age, education, and economic constraints that shape how farmers actually learn.

The authors position their contribution as a systematic micro-level explanation of the causes behind the digital literacy gap among farmers, one that provides a practical foundation and theoretical rationale for formulating macro-level policies to bridge it. In an era when agricultural modernization, rural e-commerce, and digital governance are converging on the world’s farming communities, the stakes extend well beyond China. Rural populations across many countries face the same structural predicament: infrastructure arrives faster than capability, and capability arrives faster than confidence. By showing that the divide is produced through a dynamic interplay of who farmers are, what surrounds them, and what they come to believe is possible, the study reframes digital inclusion as a problem of motivation and social context as much as one of technology. The farmers who thrive digitally are not simply those with the newest phones, but those whose circumstances and communities have convinced them that learning is worth the effort — a finding that should resonate with anyone designing the next generation of digital-inclusion policy.

Subject of Research: The formation mechanism of the digital literacy divide among farmers in China

Article Title: Formation mechanism of the digital literacy divide among farmers: a qualitative study from China

Article References: Formation mechanism of the digital literacy divide among farmers: a qualitative study from China. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41599-026-09430-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41599-026-09430-y

Keywords: digital literacy, digital divide, farmers, rural China, qualitative research, digitalization willingness, social networks, digital inclusion, agricultural modernization, mediating role, in-depth interviews, rural policy