Live-stream-Based Agricultural Platforms and Rural Household Income: Evidence from Wuma Village, Zhejiang Province

In recent years, all kinds of agricultural e-commerce platforms have become a transformative force in the countryside of China, enabling small farmers to bypass the traditional channels and go directly to the urban consumer markets. This paper examines how such platforms influence household income through transaction cost reduction, matching efficiency improvement and scale expansion incentives. A modified Solow growth model was developed to formalize these mechanisms and embed them in a structured analytical framework. Empirical validation is conducted using original household survey data collected from Wuma Village in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, where livestream sales have become widespread. A two-stage regression approach is employed, which first estimates the impact of platform utilization on each mechanism, followed by quantifying the extent to which each mechanism contributes to income growth. Final Results show that e-commerce platforms significantly improve all three mechanisms, each of which is strongly and positively associated with household income. These findings suggest that digital agricultural platforms can promote inclusive rural development not only by digitizing transactions, but also by reshaping the main drivers of market access, efficiency and productive scale.