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Limited research exists on the role of information access as a key success factor for rural entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to examine the importance of information access, among other inequality forms, in shaping entrepreneurial outcomes.

The authors used a qualitative, inductive research methodology. They conducted interviews with rural entrepreneurs and gained insights into the role of information access and basic tangible resources in shaping their ventures.

The authors identified two critical factors that impact rural entrepreneurs: inequalities in access to information and basic tangible resources. They found that inequalities in rural entrepreneurship are often interrelated, rather than isolated. The authors demonstrated that the relationship between entrepreneurship and inequality is not solely characterized by a positive or negative correlation but is a dynamic interplay where certain inequality forms may create barriers to opportunities for some individuals while creating opportunities for others.

The authors uncovered key barriers in rural entrepreneurship and constructed a roadmap to effectively address these challenges, providing valuable insights to policymakers and support initiatives and enabling the target of high-impact resources. This research supports efforts to provide rural entrepreneurs with equal opportunities to grow and succeed.

This research significantly contributes to the field by examining the complexities of entrepreneurship in emerging economies, with a particular focus on rural areas. The authors introduced a comprehensive conceptual model linking inequality and entrepreneurship, explored the challenges faced by rural entrepreneurs and offered strategic policy recommendations for development initiatives.

The Internet has encouraged rural tourism experience providers to develop a new management strategy that opts for disintermediation to access the market. In this context, incoming travel agencies (destination management companies [DMCs]), despite the local component, lose capacity to promote the rural tourism. The main question is what kind of relationship between stakeholders would enhance effective intermediation processes between them. The paper examines such constraints and limitations of existing relationships between small local rural tourism producers and DMCs.

Using the Basque Country region of northern Spain as a case study, the authors used a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodology based on semi-structured in-depth interviews and an online survey. The data analysis strategy used incorporated descriptive and exploratory factor analysis (EFA).

In this research, most of the tourism disintermediation factors identified in previous literature were reinforced when tested in the rural context. The results confirm that power, value, product differentiation, digitisation and stakeholder collaboration are key elements. The value provided in the international segment by DMCs, though, was found to be irrelevant.

This article contributes to filling a gap in the literature on rural tourism destination management from a holistic view of the destination understanding the business-to-business (B2B) relationship among stakeholders in rural tourism. This paper focuses on those elements that create value for local producers to sell the products through intermediaries and provides a framework for understanding the factors involved in value creation in rural tourism intermediation, which is applicable to further empirical studies and provides interesting managerial implications.

With increasing wine consumption in Armenia, both residents and inbound tourists have become attractive target groups for wine sales, which are stimulated by wine tourism activities. The objective of this explorative study is to shed light on the potential of wine tourism for rural development in Armenia.

The paper starts with a structured and interdisciplinary literature review. Based on qualitative surveys among local tour operators and wine producers, and complemented by three expert interviews, the offer of wine tourism activities in Armenia will then be analyzed.

Each of the surveyed wine producers offers wine tourism activities. Foreign tourists know little about the Armenian wine industry, however, and are interested in cultural experiences and Armenia’s breathtaking nature. Armenian wine producers need to understand the expectations of their target groups to develop or adapt their offers successfully.

Due to the explorative nature of this study, the sample size of the surveyed wineries and tour operators is small and hence not representative. In addition, only local tour operators were surveyed. The sample should be extended to include foreign tour operators and more wineries in future research projects.

Whereas first studies on the structure and competitiveness of the Armenian wine sector exist, there is no survey on the general wine tourism in Armenia and its potential to foster rural development.

The purpose of this paper is to create optimally located Facilitation Centers on this tourist circuit, evaluated through network analysis, thus creating an effective linkage between tourism and economic activities of the craftsmen who are the custodians of the cultural heritage of Puri.

The craft villages lying in and around this tourist circuit are surveyed to establish socio-economic condition of artisans, significance of the craft and spatial distribution of craft villages and the willingness of artisans to travel closer to the transport spine. Network analysis is used to assess the suitability of Facilitation Center location using travel time and distance as parameters. Finally, the sustainability of the Facilitation Centers is evaluated using a cost-benefit analysis (CBA).

The Facilitation Centers can be spatially developed at the strategic locations to expand tourist market. This will help in leveraging the economic benefits of tourism to a marginalized rural artisan community by creating a sustainable model.

The focus on festival can help to protect local cultural traditions, develop tourism and promote the economic, social and cultural developments of the destination. Dispersal strategies adopted aim to increase visitors' satisfaction with the product and thus entice them to stay longer in the destination.

This study sought to examine the interaction between rural bank performance, information and communication technology (ICT) investment, ICT diffusion and financial development.

Data were sourced from the Association of Rural Banks (ARB) Apex and World Development Indicators (WDI) for the period 2014–2020. A total of 122 rural banks were used for this study. The study adopted the two-step system generalized method of moments (SGMM) estimation technique in assessing the interactions among variables.

This study found compelling evidence to support the positive effect of ICT investment on banks’ performance (return on asset and net interest margin). Further, ICT diffusion and financial development positively influence banks’ performance. The results show a positive moderating effect exerted by ICT diffusion and financial development on the impact of bank risk (bank stability) and ICT investment on all three performance measures.

The study focuses on the rural banking sector in the Ghanaian economy, compared to related studies that examine the subject matter for commercial banks. The moderating effects of ICT diffusion and financial development are assessed to guide policy on rural banking development in Ghana.

This paper aims to explore the rationale, the process and the outcomes and risks of place branding in rural China.

An in-depth case study analysis, including interviews, has been conducted.

Place branding in the case of China is practiced and dominated through administrative entities by using subsidies and regional development programs to coordinate, organize and promote local agricultural resources. Although this government-led place branding has effective effects on rural development, it is unsustainable and unstable because it lacks sufficient market and stakeholder participation.

The effectiveness of place branding in China has been examined and proved.

The government’s role in place branding in China should be adjusted. The government should position itself as a service and auxiliary role. Simultaneously, it should strengthen market-oriented operations and stakeholder participation in place branding.

This paper is one of the first contributions to examine the impact of place branding as a rural development policy tool in China, and the in-depth case study examines and proves the effectiveness of place branding in rural China.

The aim of this study is to discern the role of digital finance in driving rural industrial integration and revitalization. Specifically, it intends to shed light on how the deep development of digital finance can contribute to the optimization and transformation of the rural industrial structure. The research further explores the particular effects of this financial transformation in the central and western regions of China.

This research studies the influence of digital finance on rural industrial integration across 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2020. Utilizing the entropy weight method, a comprehensive evaluation index system is established to gauge the level of rural industrial integration. A two-way fixed effects model, intermediary effect model, and threshold effect model are employed to decipher the relationship between digital finance and rural industrial integration.

Findings reveal a positive relationship between digital finance and rural industrial integration. A single threshold feature was identified: beyond a traditional finance development level, the marginal effect of digital finance on rural industrial integration increases. These effects are more noticeable in central and western regions.

Empirical outcomes contribute to policy discourse on rural digital finance, assisting policymakers in crafting effective strategies. Understanding the threshold of traditional finance development provides a new perspective on the potential of digital finance to drive rural industrial integration.

This research examines the impact of the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Project (NRECDP) on poverty reduction and income growth in rural China.

The study develops a theoretical framework, which considers the role of geographical, technological, institutional and cultural factors for the e-commerce poverty alleviation (e-CPA) model. Empirically, this study applies the difference-in-differences (DID) model and the event study approach to evaluate the effectiveness of NRECDP on the basis of large-scale county-level and household-level panel data spanning 2010 to 2020.

The study found that the NRECDP, as a government-led, information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled, market-based program, has led to a significant increase in per capita output of primary industry employees, as well as in the disposable income of rural residents, especially those in national-level poverty-stricken (NP) counties. The interventions of the NRECDP achieved these positive outcomes through transportation and Internet infrastructure improvement, ICT adoption and human capital accumulation in impoverished towns and villages in remote rural areas. These effects are larger in the eastern region of China, followed by the central region, whereas the weakest effects were found in the western region. However, we found little evidence of the NRECDP increasing household developmental expenditure.

The study findings have important practical and policy implications for rural e-commerce development and self-sustained poverty alleviation solutions. The research revealed the significance of government NRECDP interventions for increasing rural income, reducing living costs, and empowering the rural population in its multiple social roles, namely, as consumers, producers, employees and microentrepreneurs. The local cultural context may also play a role in ICT adoption and entrepreneurship cultivation with a downstream effect on the effectiveness of e-CPA practices. Policymakers would need to ensure a supportive entrepreneur-friendly environment for rural e-commerce development and continue implementing progressive policies for poverty alleviation.

This study explores poverty alleviation issues in China by developing for the first time a multi-faceted framework that is subsequently tested by both county-level and household-level large-scale observations. Also, it is the first study to provide nationwide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of e-CPA in narrowing down the spatial and digital divides in China. In addition to the impact of geography, technology and governmental support, this study also sheds light on the role of culture in the adoption and diffusion of digital technologies and as a source of local entrepreneurial opportunities.

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect and mechanism of the digital economy’s influence on the binary margin of agricultural exports.

Based on the theoretical analysis of the mechanism of the digital economy’s influence on the binary margin of agricultural exports, this study empirically examines the effect and mechanism of the digital economy’s influence on the binary margin of agricultural exports based on China’s customs export data from 2011 to 2016.

The relevant findings are threefold. (1) The digital economy significantly improves the binary margin of agricultural exports, and its effect on the intensive margin is stronger than that on the expansive margin. After the expansive margin is subdivided, the effects on the three sub-variables of the expansive margin are in the following order: old products exported to new markets > new products exported to old markets > new products exported to new markets. (2) The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the digital economy has a stronger role in promoting the binary margin of exports for enterprises in the eastern region, high-income countries as the destination of exports and state-owned enterprises. (3) Mechanism analysis shows that the digital economy promotes the binary margin of agricultural exports by reducing trade costs and intensifying market competition.

First, in terms of research perspective, although there are some studies on the impact of the digital economy on export trade in existing literature, the research objects mainly focus on manufacturing enterprises. In fact, agricultural trade is susceptible to natural conditions and seasonal factors, and countries may impose more SPS measures and TBT measures on agricultural trade due to risk considerations. The relationship between the digital economy and agricultural trade also has its own characteristics, but there are few research studies in this area. At present, only Liu and Gao (2022), based on the data of total imports and exports of different agricultural products from 2004 to 2018, have established a vector auto-regressive model to empirically analyse the heterogeneous dynamic impact of the digital economy on the trade volume of agricultural products. In addition, Ma and Guo (2023) conducted an empirical test on the total effect, regional heterogeneity and threshold effect of the digital economy on agricultural export trade based on China’s provincial panel data from 2011 to 2020. Therefore, under the new circumstances of continuous integration of digital technology and agriculture, this study interprets the impact effect and mechanism of the digital economy on the binary margin of agricultural exports from the perspective of the digital economy, providing new research perspectives and approaches for promoting the growth of agricultural exports. Second, in terms of theoretical analysis, the above studies have not been fully analysed in terms of the specific mechanism of the impact of the digital economy on agricultural exports. Based on the positive and negative characteristics of agricultural trade, this study introduces two kinds of roles into the theoretical analysis framework to comprehensively determine the trade impact effect of the digital economy. Third, in terms of research design, this study empirically examines the impact of the digital economy on the binary margin of agricultural products, passing a series of robustness tests and investigating the mediating roles of trade cost and market competition effects, producing an empirical basis for China to leverage the digital economy to promote the binary margin of agricultural exports.