Promoting rural entrepreneurship is an important approach to achieving rural revitalization, accelerating the construction of a new development pattern, and enhancing the well-being of farmers. Based on the County Digital Rural Index (CDRI) and the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), we empirically examine the impact and role of digital rural construction (DRC) on rural household entrepreneurship. Our findings are as follows: (1) DRC plays a vital role in facilitating entrepreneurial behaviors (EB) and entrepreneurial performance (EP) among rural households. (2) DRC indirectly fosters rural household entrepreneurship by facilitating resource acquisition and opportunity identification. (3) Our heterogeneity analysis reveals that DRC’s promotion effect is stronger among local entrepreneurs and individuals with risk-averse tendencies. Additionally, DRC has a more pronounced effect in stimulating EB within lower-income families, while its impact on EP shows the opposite trend. Furthermore, DRC’s influence on rural household entrepreneurship is particularly significant in regions with more advanced digital rural development. (4) Additionally, we observe a significant positive impact of the four dimensions of DRC on rural household entrepreneurship, further affirming the role of DRC in driving rural household entrepreneurship. In the digital economy era, this study provides empirical evidence to promote the integration of digital technology and rural entrepreneurship, offering valuable insights for advancement in this domain.

To reduce the passive entrepreneurial exit of rural families and improve the quality of rural entrepreneurship, we theoretically discuss how digital technology can help rural families to obtain resources in the process of entrepreneurship from a micro perspective to inhibit the passive entrepreneurial exit, and perform an empirical test by using the data of three consecutive periods of China’s household finance survey in 2015, 2017, and 2019. The results show that: First, digital technology use has a significant inhibitory effect on the passive entrepreneurial exit of rural families. Second, the role of digital technology lies in effectively improving the social capital, human capital, and financial capital of entrepreneurial families, thus inhibiting the passive entrepreneurial exit of rural families. Third, the role of digital technology is related to the development level of village social networks and county economic development levels. The average marginal effect of data technology in villages or counties with high development levels is higher. The policy implications are as follows: We should accelerate the improvement of rural digital infrastructure construction, accelerate the expansion of digital services for the people, and enhance the ability of farmers to use digital technology while increasing policy support for farmers’ entrepreneurship.

This paper uses panel data from the 2014–2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to study the impact of digital inclusive finance (DIF) on the cultural consumption of urban and rural residents using two-way fixed effects. The results show that DIF can promote the growth of cultural consumption of urban and rural residents, and the promotion effect is greater for rural residents. Mechanism analysis shows that DIF increases the cultural consumption of urban and rural residents mainly through easing liquidity constraints, reducing precautionary savings, and increasing payment convenience. Moreover, reducing precautionary savings has a greater impact on the cultural consumption of urban residents, while the other two mechanisms have a greater impact on rural residents. In the heterogeneity analysis, credit business and some indicators reflecting the convenience of payment have a greater impact on rural residents. The insurance business has a greater impact on urban residents. This paper provides policy references for the development of DIF and the enhancement of residents’ cultural consumption.

The elderly dependency ratio in China has increased from 10.7% in 2003 to 17.8% in 2019, and there may be a link between the widespread withdrawal of family entrepreneurship in society and the increased dependency burden. Based on China Family Panel Studies, we empirically examine the impact of dependency burden on household entrepreneurial exit behavior. We find that the likelihood of household exit from entrepreneurial activity increases as the population ages. Compared to active exit from entrepreneurship, dependency burden mainly induces failure exit from household entrepreneurship. In addition to reducing physical capital accumulation and labor supply, dependency burden also reduces the household workforce’s mental and physical health, leading to the entrepreneurial exit. The application of digital technology can mitigate the negative effects of dependency burden in household entrepreneurship. The mitigating effect of digital technology will be enhanced with the deepening of the application. Therefore, government and academia need to pay attention to the negative effects of dependency burden on the sustainability of household entrepreneurship.

Raising rural household income is central to narrowing the rural–urban gap and advancing common prosperity. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study examines the impact of digital skills, a key for human capital, on rural Chinese households’ income and uses a fixed-effects model and the instrumental variable method to address endogeneity. The study finds that digital skills raise total household income, and each additional skill is associated with an increase of CNY 1678. By skill type, online business skills have the largest effect, followed by work–study skills, while entertainment–social skills are negatively associated with income. Heterogeneity analyses indicate larger gains for households with lower educational attainment and lower income, showing that a stronger regional digital environment amplifies these effects. Mechanism tests point to factor reallocation toward the nonfarm sector, via higher probabilities of off-farm employment and entrepreneurship and improved access to formal credit, as the primary pathway. Consistent with these channels, digital skills increase wages and operating income and reduce inequality in these components, as well as benefitting total income, but they have no detectable effect on property or transfer income or their dispersion. These findings point to key implications for boosting rural income growth and reducing inequality, namely strengthening digital skill development and optimizing the digital environment to enhance rural households’ endogenous income-generating capacity.

Open public data is a vital institutional arrangement for overcoming data constraints in corporate low-carbon technological innovation; however, its mechanisms and boundaries remain empirically untested. Using a panel dataset of China’s Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed A-share firms over the 2007-2023 period, this study employs a difference-in-differences (DID) approach to examine the impact of open public data on corporate low-carbon technological innovation. The results show that open public data has a significant positive effect on corporate low-carbon technological innovation, and the results remain robust across multiple validation tests. Mechanism tests point out that open public data primarily drives corporate low-carbon technological innovation by enhancing government transparency and reducing barriers to factor mobility. The heterogeneity analysis indicates that the positive impact of open public data is more pronounced among firms characterized by higher R&D investment, lower financial constraints, and greater digitalization. Further analysis indicates that open public data also exhibits significant geographic and industry spillover effects, with the geographic spillover following an inverted U-shaped pattern of decay and the industry spillover driven by peer imitation. This paper provides policy references for the development of open public data and the enhancement of corporate low-carbon technological innova-tion.