How does digital literacy affect farmers’ organic agriculture adoption? Evidence from the key ecological functional area in Wuling Mountains of Hunan Province

Digitally empowering farmers to adopt organic agriculture is an important measure to realize green and digital synergy of agriculture. Based on digital literacy and technology adoption theory, the impact of farmers’ digital literacy on their organic agriculture adoption is analyzed by constructing a structural equation model based on the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model, using the survey data of rural households from five counties in key ecological functional areas of western Hunan Province. The results show that: 1) Performance expectations have the greatest impact on farmers' organic agriculture adoption, with a total effect of 0.258. Digital general literacy, digital application literacy and digital innovation literacy are very important for farmers' adoption of organic agriculture, and their impact effect is comparable to that of performance expectation. The total effects were 0.238, 0.234, and 0.210, respectively. Moreover, the direct impact of digital general literacy and digital application literacy is significantly greater than the indirect impact significantly. 2) There is heterogeneity in the effects of digital literacy on organic agriculture adoption of farmers with different scales, and the effects of digital innovation literacy and digital application literacy on the organic agriculture adoption of large scale farmers are more significant; and the heterogeneity of the effects of digital innovation literacy on the organic agriculture adoption behavior of two groups farmers is more prominent. Agricultural experience has significant moderating effects on the relationship between digital literacy and farmers' organic agriculture adoption. Thus, this paper puts forward the policy suggestions of accelerating the construction of digital infrastructure, popularizing the cultivation of digital literacy among farmers, increasing the publicity and promotion of organic agriculture, and appropriately tilting the policy to small-scale and inexperienced farmers. The expansion of this paper is mainly reflected in two aspects: First, referring to the technology adoption model and digital literacy theory, the formation path of farmers’ organic agriculture technology adoption behavior in the context of digital empowerment is discussed from the perspective of digital empowerment. Second, the driving forces of farmers’ organic agriculture technology adoption were comprehensively analyzed from the dimensions of performance expectation, effort expectation, convenience, social impact, perceived risk and digital literacy, and the structural equation model was used to analyze the multi-causal, direct and indirect effects at the same time. Of course, the analysis is only based on the cross-sectional data of farmers, and the follow-up survey of farmers needs to be carried out in the later stage, so as to carry out dynamic analysis based on the panel data, then provide continuous and detailed evidence for improving farmers’ digital literacy and promoting the promotion of organic agriculture technology.