Binhui Wei

The benefits of e‐commerce development for rural households have received extensive attention, but we still know little about its effect on entrepreneurial behaviours in China. We regard the national e‐commerce demonstration city construction (NEDCC) policy as a quasi‐natural experiment and use a staggered difference‐in‐differences (DID) method to determine the potential causal effect. Results show that e‐commerce development significantly promotes rural household entrepreneurial behaviours, supported by several robustness tests. In particular, we use the Bacon decomposition method to guarantee the reliability of staggered DID estimates and exclude potential spillover effects. Moreover, industrial upgrading, credit constraint easing, informational advantages and social capital accumulation may explain this positive effect. Furthermore, we reveal the inclusive impact of e‐commerce development, finding that it is more likely to stimulate rural household entrepreneurship in some disadvantaged areas. However, this effect is limited by the digital divide due to the threshold for e‐commerce tool users. Our findings contribute to research on digital entrepreneurship and the welfare of e‐commerce development in developing countries.

The positive effects of rural tourism are widely recognized, yet its influence on local household consumption has been insufficiently explored. Our study fills this gap by investigating the relationship between rural tourism development and household consumption, using the Leisure Agriculture and Rural Tourism Demonstration County (LARTDC) policy as a quasi‐natural experiment framework. Employing a staggered difference‐in‐differences (DID) method, we found that rural tourism development contributes to a 4.91% increase in per capita household consumption. The robustness of our main results is confirmed using advanced techniques such as Bacon decomposition and DID_M estimations. We attributed this positive impact to the rise in nonfarm employment and infrastructure development. Our heterogeneity analysis further reveals the inclusive nature of rural tourism, showing its significant role in improving household consumption patterns, diminishing consumption inequality, and enhancing welfare, especially in disadvantaged rural households. Further analysis confirms that greater LARTDC policy exposure may lead to higher levels of household consumption. Moreover, we revealed that rural tourism increased the freedom of employment, especially for the elderly and women; however, it did not squeeze out leisure time or hurt the quality of life and welfare. Theoretically, this study contributes to the discourse on tourism's role in fostering economic growth and social equity, addressing the patterns of high savings and low consumption in rural China. Practically, our findings suggest that post‐COVID‐19 recovery strategies in developing countries may emphasize rural tourism development, aiming to stimulate household spending and achieve balanced growth.