Advancing rural e-commerce: examining farmers’ behavioral intention toward e-commerce platforms in China

Although the expansion of e-commerce has demonstrably enhanced rural livelihoods, the behavioral underpinnings and contextual enablers that shape farmers’ adoption decisions remain inadequately theorized and empirically underexplored. This study advances a tailored extension of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology to construct a comprehensive analytical framework. It examines how performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, habit, perceived risk, and policy support jointly inform farmers’ behavioral intention. A survey employing purposive sampling was conducted using a self-administered questionnaire, gathering 392 valid responses from farmers in Sichuan Province, China. The data collected was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results confirmed significant associations between the constructs—social influence, facilitating conditions, habit, perceived risk, and policy support—and farmers’ behavioral intention. Furthermore, policy support was found to moderate the relationship between habit and behavioral intention, as well as between perceived risk and behavioral intention. Moreover, this study used IPMA to evaluate the importance and efficacy of predictors on the outcome variable, demonstrating that habit, social influence, and facilitating factors significantly influence farmers’ behavioral intention. These results validate UTAUT2 within the context of e-commerce adoption intention in China and contribute to the literature on policy support’s impact on farmers’ behavioral intention. The findings present critical implications for policymakers and platform administrators, furnishing valuable insights to advance e-commerce adoption within the agricultural sector.