How Technology Shock Awareness Drives Digital Entrepreneurship Among Farmers: An Analysis of Intermediary Mechanisms Based on Key Support Counties

Against the backdrop of the accelerating penetration of digital technologies into rural areas, it is of great significance to understand how farmers in key support counties perceive technological changes and form digital entrepreneurial willingness to promote endogenous development in underdeveloped areas. Based on questionnaire data from 301 farmers in 11 national-level key support counties for rural revitalization in Shaanxi Province, this study takes the “stimulus-organism-response” ( SOR ) theory and stress coping theory as the analytical framework, introduces the “technological shock awareness” as the external stimulus to constructs the chain intermediary model of “technology stress-information behavior capacity”. The mediation model and the bias-corrected Bootstrap method are used to investigate the formation mechanism and transmission path of farmers' digital entrepreneurial intention. The results are as follows. First, technology shock awareness positively affects farmers' digital entrepreneurship intention through multiple intermediary paths. Among them, the mediating effect of technological stress is the most significant, manifesting as a psychological-driven transmission mechanism; the intermediary contribution of information behavior competence is relatively limited; the overall effect of the chain intermediary of techno-stress-information behavior competence is small. Second, the results of the grouping test indicate that training experience is associated with the way of action of technology shock awareness to some extent. For farmers who have not received training, awareness of technological shock primarily influences their digital entrepreneurial intention through the path of techno-stress; for farmers who have received training, their digital entrepreneurship intention depends more on the direct empowerment effects resulting from the acquisition of skills. The research shows that the formation of digital entrepreneurship willingness of farmers in key support counties is not a passive response to technological change, but the result of the joint action of psychological adjustment and ability reconstruction. The research provides micro evidence for understanding the behavioral logic of farmers' digital entrepreneurship in underdeveloped areas, and also provides policy implications for promoting digital empowerment and farmers' ability cultivation in similar areas.