Jin Xu, Hui Liu
Digital village construction (DVC) is an important tool for promoting rural revitalization and increasing farmers’ income. This paper selects panel data at the county level and employs the difference-in-differences (DID) method, combined with mediation effect models, heterogeneity tests, and multi-dimensional robustness tests, to systematically explore the impact of DVC on farmers’ income and its internal transmission path. According to the research, the DVC has a positive impact on farmers’ income at the 1% significance level, a conclusion that remains valid after robustness tests such as PSM-DID and substitution of the explained variable. Industrial restructuring, agricultural mechanization, and enterprise agglomeration are positively significant at the 5%, 1%, and 1% levels, respectively, indicating that these three are the core intermediary mechanisms for increasing farmers’ income, promoting farmers’ income growth by releasing structural dividends, efficiency dividends, and agglomeration dividends, respectively. The income-increasing effect of DVC exhibits significant heterogeneity, being positively significant at the 5% and 1% levels in areas with a deep digital divide and non-grain-producing areas, but not significant in areas with a shallow digital divide and major grain-producing areas. Therefore, policy recommendations are to optimize resource allocation, broaden income-increasing pathways, and implement differentiated policies.