Accessing the effect of smartphone agricultural applications on land transfer: evidence from Sichuan province in China

Purpose This study aims to examine farmers' decision to use smartphone agricultural applications (SAAs) and how SAAs adoption impact their land transfer behaviors in terms of the current land transfer-in area (LTA) and the future willingness to renew land transfer-in after it expires (WTR). Design/methodology/approach This study provides empirical evidence on the relationship between farmers' use of SAAs and land transfer choice, using a field survey data of 752 rural farm households in 2020 from Sichuan province of China. The endogenous switching models are employed to address potential self-selection bias associated with voluntary SAAs use and to quantitatively examine the impacts of SAAs use on land transfer choice. Findings The empirical results reveal that SAAs significantly improves the probability of transfer-in of more land by 39.10%. We find SAAs use has heterogeneous impacts on land transfer-in choice in the groups of agricultural technology, extension service, marketing and credit. Besides, we also find that SAAs use exerts highly positive and significant impact on farmers with less land area transfer-in. Moreover, SAAs can increase the probability of farmers' willingness to renew the land transfer-in by 30%. Originality/value To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the quantitative relationship between the use of SAAs and farm households' land transfer choice. The findings of this work can provide policy-related insights to help government promote the development of digital applications in the agricultural sector.