The relationship between rural information consumption and regional economic development with spatial Durbin model—A case study of Zhejiang, China

Information consumption is a kind of economic activity that directly or indirectly takes information products and information services as consumption objects. Most of the existing studies have established the "formula” of rural information consumption in promoting economic and social development, while few efforts have been devoted to study the quantitative reciprocities between them. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between information consumption in rural areas and regional economic development with a case study of Zhejiang, China. Based on rural information consumption-related indexes, basic geographic data, and other publicly available regional economic development related data, we conduct the exploration with the spatial Durbin model (SDM). The study indicates that (1) from the perspective of spatial analysis, the economic development level of all prefecture-level cities in Zhejiang, China has a significant positive spatial correlation; (2) in rural areas, the network infrastructure improvement, information industry clustering, etc. can accelerate enhancing information consumption and promote regional economic development; and (3) facilitate the development of rural information consumption is conducive to alleviate the imbalance of regional economic development. It is hoped that our study can help understand the current situation of information consumption in rural China and provide a theoretical reference for rural economic and social development.