Who Benefits More from E-commerce? Resource-Endowment Heterogeneity in Grape Growers' Behavioral Upgrading in Yingkou City, Liaoning Province

Abstract

Using survey data from 386 grape growers in Yingkou City, this article examines whether the behavioral effects of e-commerce participation vary across households with different resource endowments. Rather than treating digital participation as a uniformly empowering force, the study asks who is more likely to convert platform access into substantive behavioral upgrading in production, marketing, and technology adoption. Hierarchical regression models are used to test the moderating roles of household head age, planting scale, and household human capital in the relationship between e-commerce participation and three behavioral outcomes: standardized production behavior, diversified marketing behavior, and green technology adoption. The results show clear heterogeneity. Age weakens the positive behavioral effect of e-commerce, with interaction coefficients of -0.156, -0.163, and -0.151 across the three outcomes. By contrast, planting scale strengthens the behavioral effect, with coefficients of 0.172, 0.185, and 0.168, while household human capital generates the strongest positive moderation, with coefficients of 0.189, 0.201, and 0.182. Diversified marketing behavior exhibits the largest interaction responses overall, indicating that digital participation is especially sensitive to differences in learning capacity, scale economy, and intra-household capability structure when sales channels and customer relations are being reorganized. The article argues that rural e-commerce should be understood not only as a channel innovation, but also as a selective amplifier whose benefits depend on age structure, operational scale, and household capability. Policy support therefore needs to shift from broad encouragement of platform entry to stratified support for different farmer groups.