Does the Use of ICT Enhance the Effectiveness of Rural Governance in China: An Empirical Evidence

Rural governance is the cornerstone of national governance and essential for modernizing grassroots democratic governance. The ongoing development of ICT has reshaped how farmers exchange information and interact socially, fostering innovations in rural governance through new technological means. This paper utilizes survey data on the modernization of rural governance and employs the benchmark regression of the Oprobit model. The regression results indicate that ICT does not significantly enhance rural governance effectiveness, a finding that remains robust after rigorous robustness testing. Mechanistic analysis reveals that while public goods provision, rural public leadership, and rural public trust positively mediate the impact of ICT on rural governance, the direct negative effect of ICT use outweighs these positive indirect effects. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that ICT has a more significant negative impact on villagers with low income, low education, and low social capital. Therefore, future policies should focus more on these groups to strengthen ICT’s role in rural governance, providing technological empowerment for a modern rural governance system that integrates self-governance, ethics, and the rule of law.