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Abstract
This paper assesses the impact of participation in off-farm work on smartphone use, using an endogenous switching probit model and a survey of 493 rural Chinese households. The joint impacts of off-farm work participation and smartphone use on household income are also analyzed using a control function method. The results show that participation in off-farm work increases the probability of smartphone use significantly. Furthermore, we find that the household heads who engaged in off-farm activities and who were smartphone users earned 3,430 Yuan and 2,643 Yuan more per capita annual income, respectively, compared to their full-time farming and smartphone-free counterparts.
Acknowledgement : The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from Lincoln University within the seed fund project (INT5056).