Maintaining stability in rural labor markets and enhancing labor employment stickiness (RLFS) are essential for alleviating the persistent outflow of rural labor. Based on data from the 2014–2022 China Family Panel Studies and Treating whether digital rural development plans were issued as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ a staggered difference-in-differences model to evaluate the impact of digital rural development policy implementation on RLFS. Meanwhile, we also explore the potential mechanisms through which the policy affects RLFS by combining the analysis with Order Logit model. The results show that the implementation of the digital rural development policy significantly increases RLFS, and these findings remain robust after a series of checks. Mechanism analysis indicates that the policy improves RLFS by strengthening rural workers’ embeddedness in local social networks, enhancing digital literacy and physical health, reducing speculative motives, and expanding local labor demand. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that the policy has stronger positive effects on RLFS among younger and middle-aged individuals, those with lower levels of human capital, and those engaged in agricultural work and that it is more effective in regions with diminishing demographic dividends and weaker land resource endowments. Further analysis suggests that although the policy increases the employment stickiness of younger rural workers and agricultural laborers, it does not improve the efficiency of rural land use. Therefore, the government should continue expanding the coverage of the digital rural development policy to fully leverage its positive effects on rural labor markets while also adjusting existing policy instruments to identify the key channels through which digital technologies can enhance land use efficiency.
Zhao et al. (Tue,) studied this question.