An empirical study on the impact of internet technology development on agricultural economic structure in China

【Objective】This paper studied the relationship between the development of internet technology and the change of agricultural economic structure in China, and provided theoretical basis for optimizing agricultural economic structure and realizing high-quality coordinated development of agriculture in China.【Method】Based on the panel data of 30 provinces(excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) in China from 2001 to 2018, the agricultural economic structure was subdivided into narrow agricultural economic structure and broad agricultural economic structure, and the panel regression model was constructed on the basis of internet penetration index indicating the development of internet technology, probing into the relationship between the development of internet technology and the change of agricultural economic structure in China, analyzing its influence on the change of agricultural economic structure in China.【Result】The study found that by 2018, China's internet penetration rate was 56.37%, 14 times as that of 2001, but the internet penetration rate was uneven, with the highest penetration rate of 78.00% in the coastal developed areas and less than 0.00% in the western regions. The proportion of forestry, animal husbandry and fishery output value to the total agricultural output value was about 47.63%, 2.5 times as that of 2001;the agricultural economic structure was optimized. In terms of narrow agricultural economic structure, when internet penetration increased by 1%, cash crop proportion increased by 0.33%, when mobile internet penetration increased by 1%, cash crop increased by about 0.60%. In terms of broad agricultural economic structure, when internet penetration increased by 1%, the proportion of forest, animal husbandry and fishery increased by 0.04%, when mobile internet increased by 1% and that of forest, animal husbandry and fishery increased by 0.10%. For the impact of agricultural economic structure, the internet penetration rate and the level of compatibility was increasing, and the impact of compatibility on the narrow sense of agricultural economic structure was more obvious. In addition, the impact of financial support to agriculture on cash crop was negative, which indicated that the financial support to agriculture policy has played a positive role in ensuring the cultivation of food crops, and the average level of human capital in agricultural cultivation was still low.【Suggestion】Internet technology and agricultural development should be actively integrated to provide accurate services for agricultural production and economic restructuring;rural infrastructure construction should be strengthened to improve the compatibility between rural logistics capacity and internet technology;the investment of human capital in the application of internet technology in agricultural production and marketing should be increased.