How Does E-Commerce Participation Promote Farmers’ Green Production Behavior? Evidence from the China Rural Revitalization Survey

Promoting farmers’ green production behavior is essential for ensuring the quality and safety of agricultural products and advancing sustainable agricultural development. As information and communication technologies become increasingly integrated into agriculture, rural e-commerce has emerged as an important means of reshaping agricultural product marketing and farmers’ production decisions, while providing new impetus for green agricultural transformation. Based on 1950 crop-growing farm households from the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS), this study estimates the effect of e-commerce participation on farmers’ green production behavior using ordinary least squares (OLS), two-stage least squares (2SLS), and mechanism analysis. The empirical results show that e-commerce participation significantly promotes farmers’ green production behavior, and this effect is stronger in areas with higher logistics accessibility. The mechanism analysis further suggests that farmland transfer-in and credit access may serve as potential pathways through which e-commerce participation influences farmers’ green production behavior. These findings highlight the need to improve rural e-commerce services and logistics infrastructure and strengthen farmland transfer and rural financial services to reinforce the role of e-commerce participation in promoting farmers’ green production behavior.