


































Economics, Law and Policy 
ISSN 2576-2060 (Print) ISSN 2576-2052 (Online) 

Vol. 6, No. 1, 2023 

www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elp 

57 
 

Original Paper 

Research on the Mechanism and Path of Rural Industry 

Revitalization Enabled by Digital Economy in Southwest China 

Zhai Haomiao
1
 & Gao Fuxia

1
 

1
 College of Finance and Economics, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, 400031, 

China 

 

Received: April 1, 2023           Accepted: April 30, 2023        Online Published: May 23, 2023 

doi:10.22158/elp.v6n1p57                    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elp.v6n1p57 

 

Abstract 

Establishing a long-term mechanism for empowering rural industry revitalization through the digital 

economy is the key to comprehensively promoting rural revitalization during the 14th Five Year Plan 

period. This article analyzes the influencing factors and characteristics of different models of rural 

industry development in the southwest region, and identifies specific models that can match the digital 

economy’s empowerment of different industries in the southwest region. And from the perspective of 

supply side structural reform, the research on the development mechanism and implementation path of 

rural industry revitalization in Southwest China is placed under the national strategy of digital 

economy, aiming to provide scientific decision-making basis for the matching mode, mechanism design, 

and implementation path in the process of rural industry revitalization in Southwest China from the 

perspective of supply side structural reform. 

Keywords 

rural industrial revitalization, digital economy, Southwest China 

 

Funds Supporting: Chongqing Social Science Planning and Cultivation Project-“Research on the 

long-term governance mechanism of information poverty in southeast Chongqing under the 

background of rural revitalization (2021PY33)”; Chongqing Educational Science Planning 

Project-“Research on the Training Mode and Path of Diversified Internationalized Talents from the 

Perspective of the Belt and Road” (K22YY209697); Science and Technology Research Project of 

Chongqing Municipal Education Commission-“Research on the long-term governance mechanism of 

information poverty in ethnic border areas from the perspective of relative poverty (KJQN202100904)”; 

The Chongqing Higher Education Teaching Reform Research Project “Research on Curriculum 

Ideological and Political Teaching Reform Based on Applied Talent Training Mode-Taking the Course 



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of Management as an Example” (Project Number: 213215); The school-level educational reform 

project “Research on the Reform of Curriculum Ideological and Political Education Based on the 

Training Mode of Applied Talents-Taking the Course of Management as an Example” (project number: 

JY2146240). 

 

1. Introduction 

In 2021, the Central Government's “No.1 Document” clearly stated the need to “comprehensively 

promote rural revitalization and modernization of agriculture and rural areas, consolidate and expand 

the achievements of poverty alleviation and effectively connect with rural revitalization”. In the 

“window period” facing the “14th Five Year Plan” and achieving the second centenary goal of socialist 

modernization, fully implementing the new development concept, smoothly advancing agriculture and 

rural areas to a new stage of development, and achieving higher quality modern agriculture have 

become important tasks that cannot be ignored at present. At present, China still faces shortcomings 

that hinder the high-quality development of agriculture, such as outdated application technology, 

unclear investment capital growth, decentralized production and operation, high production costs and 

low returns of agricultural products. This means that relying on digital technologies such as big data 

and blockchain to break through the bottleneck of traditional agricultural development is not only a key 

issue that needs to be solved urgently to fully achieve rural revitalization and accelerate the promotion 

of high-quality agricultural development. It is also an important task to promote digital agriculture to 

realize “digital China”. Especially for the southwest region, which contains rich rural industrial 

resources, it is one of the key tasks of rural industry revitalization in the new era to realize the deep 

integration of agricultural technology, data, industry and scene through digital technology and 

accelerate the Digital transformation of agriculture and rural areas. Therefore, in the context of the 

promotion of the rural revitalization strategy, relying on the resource endowment advantages of the 

southwest region, in-depth and systematic research on the digital economy enabling rural industry 

revitalization in the southwest region and other related issues has important theoretical and practical 

significance for the realization of the goal of common prosperity in China and rural industry 

revitalization in the western region. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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2. Literature Review 

(1) Research status on the revitalization of rural industries. The research on the revitalization of 

rural industries mainly focuses on two aspects: first, industrial integration and development. Rosenberg 

(1963) and Yoffie (1997) believe that industrial integration development is not only an important 

research direction in industrial economics and information economics, but also has become a 

mainstream industrial form with social development. Zhou Zhenhua (2002), Jiang Changyun (2016), 

Guo Jun (2019) and others believe that the fundamental purpose of integrated development is to 

leverage the versatility of agriculture, enhance agricultural added value, stimulate farmers’ endogenous 

motivation, and achieve better production efficiency and economic benefits. The second is the 

high-quality development of agriculture and rural areas. The definition of the connotation of rural 

industrial revitalization in China stems from a deep understanding of high-quality agricultural and rural 

development, and an economic development model that better meets the growing practical needs of the 

people (Wei Houkai, 2020), fully reflecting the five development concepts (Shi Bo & Zhang Bingyao, 

2018; He Lifeng, 2018; Yang Weimin, 2018). Emphasizing the coordinated development of multiple 

parties, it should involve various perspectives such as economy, society, ecological environment, the 

state, and opening up to the outside world (Ren Baoping, 2018; Zhao Xiao, 2020; Gao Peiyong, 2020). 

It should also achieve high efficiency, stable growth, and innovation driven development from multiple 

aspects such as supply and demand, input-output, and income distribution (Li Wei, 2018; Lin Zhaomu, 

2018). Focusing on the revitalization of rural industries, some literature suggests that it should be 

achieved from multiple dimensions such as agricultural production and management systems (Zhong 

Yu, 2018; Xia Xianli et al., 2019). It is an organic combination of rural ecology, culture, governance, 

agricultural production, and farmers’ lives, and should be consistent with the overall goal of rural 

revitalization (Luo Biliang, 2020; Chen Mingxing, 2020). 

(2) The current research status of the digital economy. One is from a conceptual perspective. Don 

Tapscott (1996) first proposed the concept of the digital economy, pointing out that the digital economy 

is a new type of economic relationship that emerged after the emergence of internet technology. 

Institutions such as USDC (1999), USBC (2001), DBCDE (2013), and OECD (2016) define the digital 

economy as the constantly developing new technologies such as the Internet and big data, as well as 

their derived economic and social activities. Secondly, from the perspective of scope, the core part is 

the digital sector itself. In a narrow sense, it refers to new business models created through the digital 

economy, such as platform economy and e-commerce, while in a broad sense, it includes all digitized 

economic activities, such as precision agriculture, digital media, digital transactions, etc. (Bukht & 

Heeks, 2017; Peng Wensheng, 2019; Chen Yongwei, 2020). Thirdly, from the perspective of the 

composition of the digital economy, digital infrastructure is the fundamental support for the digital 

economy, and digital industrialization, as a pillar and leading industry, is steadily advancing. Among 

them, agricultural digitization is a prominent weakness in the development of the digital economy 

(China Academy of Information and Communication Technology, 2019). 



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(3) The current research status of digital economy assisting agricultural and rural development. 

Pilat (2005) and Zheng Shilin (2014) believe that informatization has a promoting effect on 

productivity improvement. Focusing on the agricultural field, research conclusions on the impact of 

informatization on total factor productivity in agriculture include: firstly, it has a significant promoting 

effect (Oguttu et al., 2014; Zhu Qiubo et al., 2019); Secondly, the impact is not significant (Steeneveld 

et al., 2015; Li Shimei & Yin Xiwen, 2017); The third is the presence of nonlinear or heterogeneous 

effects (Han Haibin & Zhang Li, 2015; Liu Tao et al., 2019). As agricultural production itself is 

characterized by regionalism, periodicity, seasonality and small elasticity of demand for agricultural 

products, farmers lack the original capital accumulation, entrepreneurial talent, data information and 

other production factors, which makes the development of the agricultural sector lag behind the urban 

sector for a long time (Zhang Xiaoshan et al., 2018). At the same time, issues such as information 

asymmetry (Stiglitz, 1981; Zhou Hongwei et al., 2019), financial exclusion and financial threshold 

effects (Leyshon et al., 1993; Su Fang et al., 2016), inadequate rural infrastructure, and mismatched 

supply and demand of financial resources and services (Wen Tao et al., 2016; He Guangwen et al., 

2019) have greatly constrained agricultural development. The advantages of the digital economy, such 

as renewability, non competitiveness, inclusivity, and non exclusivity (Bukht et al., 2018), can 

empower and enhance other production factors through integration. The integration and development 

of digital economy and agriculture and rural economy can reduce information asymmetry, expand the 

scale effect of agricultural production, optimize factor flow channels, effectively improve resource 

utilization efficiency, increase farmers’ income and happiness, and promote the transformation and 

upgrading of agriculture and rural modernization (Irwin et al., 2010; Hailu et al., 2014; Huang Jikun, 

2018; Zhang Xun et al., 2019; Xiao Xu et al., 2019). 

(4) The main problems in existing research. Scholars at home and abroad have conducted certain 

research on the empowerment of rural industries through digital economy, and the research results 

cover different fields, providing a foundation for this research topic. However, at least three aspects of 

the problem still need to be solved: 1) Although existing research has raised the universal issue of 

digital empowering the integration of agriculture and rural development, there is relatively little 

research on the spatial spillover effects of high-quality agricultural development from the perspective 

of digital economy composition, Neglecting the spatial correlation characteristics of regional economic 

activities in China. 2) Although existing research has explored the models and paths of digital economy 

empowering the development of rural industries, it has overlooked the heterogeneity and particularity 

of regional industries due to the internal and external differences of different local governments, 

markets, and social participants. Therefore, specific development models that are suitable for the actual 

situation of rural industries in the southwest region should be matched. In fact, this is the key to the 

success of digital economy empowering rural industry revitalization. 3) Existing studies have described 

the development of rural industries empowered by the digital economy through qualitative research, but 

they have not yet been able to provide corresponding evidence through appropriate quantitative 



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research on how to determine the influencing factors of rural industry development empowered by the 

digital economy in southwest China, match different industrial development models, and the operation 

mechanism and implementation path of rural industry development empowered by the digital economy 

in southwest China. 

(5) The main ideas for solving the above problems in this project. In response to the existing 

research problems, this topic focuses on breakthroughs and research: 1) Combining the characteristics 

and internal laws of local governments, markets, and participating entities, taking the primary, 

secondary, and tertiary industries in rural areas of Southwest China as the research object, and focusing 

on the particularity of industries in Southwest China, this paper studies the issue of digital economy 

empowering the development of rural industries in Southwest China from both theoretical and 

empirical perspectives. 2) By analyzing the influencing factors of the digital economy on the 

development of rural industries in the southwest region, and combining with the practical 

characteristics of rural industry development in the southwest region, a real option model is constructed 

to match the specific models of different industry development, ensuring the feasibility, long-term 

effectiveness, and sustainability of the digital economy empowering the development of rural industries 

in the southwest region. 3) Introducing various methods such as mathematical analysis, game analysis, 

and empirical analysis into the research topic, changing the drawbacks of existing literature that only 

uses qualitative methods for research. 

 

3. Research Contents 

3.1 Research on Pattern Matching of Digital Economy Empowering Rural Industrial Revitalization in 

Southwest China 

The existing research only focuses on the operational mechanism of the integration of digital economy 

and agricultural and rural economy, neglecting the importance of different regions as development 

entities, and the impact of internal and external differences in rural industries in the southwest region 

on the effectiveness of digital economy empowerment; The second is that only the practical model of 

digital economy empowering rural industrial development with Chinese characteristics is provided, 

ignoring the differences in regional differences and the differences in local governments and regional 

development entities themselves. Different regions should choose different practical models for rural 

industrial development based on the actual situation. 1) Research on the influencing factors of digital 

economy empowering rural industrial development in Southwest China. By clarifying the external 

constraints (such as digital infrastructure support, legal and regulatory mechanisms) and internal 

conditions (such as digital literacy, development status, etc.) that the digital economy empowers the 

development of rural industries in the southwest region, we empirically test the influencing factors of 

the digital economy empowering the revitalization of rural industries in the southwest region, and 

clarify the internal and external driving forces for the revitalization of rural industries in the southwest 

region. 2) Research on the Model of Empowering Rural Industry Revitalization in Southwest China 



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with the Digital Economy. By clarifying the development characteristics of different industries in rural 

areas in the southwest region, classifying the operation modes of different formats, constructing a real 

option model, calculating the benefits of digital economy empowering rural industry development 

under different modes, and matching the specific models of digital economy empowering different 

types of industry development. 3) Research on the Efficiency of Digital Economy Empowering Rural 

Industrial Revitalization in Southwest China. By clarifying the development conditions and resource 

endowment characteristics of rural industries in the Southwest region, and utilizing actual data from 

different industries in the rural areas of the Southwest region, a multidimensional evaluation index for 

the empowerment of rural industries in the Southwest region by the digital economy is designed. A 

three-stage DEA model is used to measure and analyze the efficiency of the empowerment of different 

industrial models by the digital economy. 

3.2 Research on the Construction Mechanism of Digital Economy Empowering Rural Industrial 

Revitalization in Southwest China 

The existing literature mostly focuses on the universality of digital economy empowering rural 

industrial revitalization. Firstly, it overlooks the need to pay attention to the relationship between 

different participating entities and other interest groups in different regions; The second is the failure to 

attach importance to the collaborative cooperation between local governments, markets, and social 

participation entities, which will affect the effectiveness of digital economy in empowering rural 

industrial development. 1) Research on the Linkage Mechanism of Digital Economy Empowering 

Rural Industrial Revitalization in Southwest China. Based on the perspective of rural industry 

revitalization in the southwest region, guided by market demand, this study explores the advantageous 

roles of different entities including government, market, and rural residents, constructs an evolutionary 

game model, and analyzes the co construction behavior in the process of empowering rural industry 

revitalization in the southwest region with the digital economy. 2) A Study on the Incentive Mechanism 

of Digital Economy Empowering Rural Industrial Revitalization in Southwest China. Based on the 

perspectives of local governments, markets, and social participants, guided by market demand, this 

study distinguishes the incentive forces of local governments, enterprises, and rural residents, 

constructs an evolutionary game model, and explores the establishment of a benefit sharing mechanism 

among local governments, markets, and social participants. 3) A study on the multi center collaborative 

guarantee mechanism for empowering rural industrial revitalization in Southwest China with the digital 

economy. Based on the perspective of multi center theory and collaborative governance theory, clarify 

the advantages and roles of various participating entities such as local governments, market entities, 

social organizations and units, and different industrial employment groups in the southwest region, 

construct a cooperative game model, reshape the relationship between various participating entities, 

and construct a collaborative security model with market leadership, social advocacy, and joint 

participation of new professional farmers. 

 



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3.3 Research on the Implementation Path of Empowering Rural Industry Revitalization in Southwest 

China with Digital Economy 

Although existing research has proposed the implementation idea of digital economy empowering the 

integration of agriculture and rural industries, firstly, it fails to combine the regional characteristics of 

the Southwest region itself, and secondly, it fails to combine the inherent characteristics and laws of the 

development of rural primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. 1) Research on the Path Design of 

Digital Economy Empowering Rural Industrial Revitalization in Southwest China. By examining the 

models of digital economy empowering rural industry revitalization in the eastern, central, and western 

regions, and based on the levels of local governments, markets, and social participation entities, design 

institutional, policy, and collaborative paths for digital economy empowering rural industry 

revitalization in the southwestern region, as well as safeguard measures for digital economy 

empowering rural industry revitalization, To break free from the “path dependence” of digital economy 

empowering the integrated development of agriculture and rural economy under existing standards. 2) 

Case study on empowering rural industrial revitalization in the Southwest region with the digital 

economy. By selecting cases of digital economy empowering rural industrial development under 

different modes and industry types, we attempt to apply the theory, strategy, and implementation path 

proposed in the study. We empirically test the theoretical research results of the project using methods 

such as double difference regression model (DID) and threshold regression model, and gradually 

feedback and improve it in order to promote its implementation in other regions. 

 

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