Abstract:

[Purpose/Significance] The advent of the digital era has presented China with significant opportunities to modernize rural governance. Digital literacy is crucial for enabling farmers to participate in rural governance and promote the development of digital villages. Rural residents are direct participants in digital village development, and their digital competence fundamentally determines the modernization level of rural governance. Their proficiency in digital skills affects not only the effectiveness of intelligent rural management, but also serves as a key indicator for measuring the progress of digital rural development. [Method/Process] Based on a literature review and sociopolitical reports, this study combines research objectives and thematic focus to create a questionnaire that investigates farmers' digital competence and rural governance performance. A stratified sampling strategy was implemented to select 306 rural households from diversified villages across township and sub-district jurisdictions, in Xia County, Shanxi Province, for the case study. The dataset encompasses respondents' demographic attributes, familial characteristics, digital proficiency metrics, and multidimensional indicators of rural governance efficiency and capacity building. Through integrated application of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and multivariate linear regression modeling, this investigation systematically examines the determinants through which digital literacy influences governance outcomes. Together, these approaches establish a theoretical framework and evidence-based pathways for enhancing rural digital transformation initiatives. [Results/Conclusions] The empirical analysis results indicate that farmers' digital literacy significantly impacts rural governance efficacy. Specifically, improvements in the four dimensions of digital literacy - digital awareness, digital skills, digital application, and digital security - positively influence the efficacy of rural governance.In other words, the higher the digital literacy level of farmers, the greater the enhancement in rural governance efficacy. Among these, digital security literacy has the most significant effect on improving governance efficacy. Next is digital application literacy, followed by digital awareness literacy. Digital skill literacy exhibits a relatively weaker impact. Given the significant positive influence of digital literacy on rural governance efficacy, this paper proposes recommendations from three perspectives: strengthening farmers' proactive awareness of digital literacy, enhancing their knowledge in digital literacy, and improving the digital infrastructure construction in rural areas. These suggestions provide practical references for the digital development of rural governance in Xia County, Shanxi Province. Due to various constraints, however, the study only examined Xia County in Shanxi Province as the research area, resulting in notable geographical limitations in the sample. This is because rural regions in different areas exhibit significant disparities in economic development levels, cultural traditions, and policy support, all of which may affect farmers' digital literacy and the efficacy of rural governance. Consequently, the conclusions of this study may not accurately reflect the actual conditions in rural areas across diverse regions. To improve the generalizability of the findings, future research should expand the sample selection to include more representative areas.

Key words: digital literacy, rural governance, farmer, influencing factors, rural revitalization