Abstract:     Promoting the sustained growth of farmers′ income is an important requirement for implementing rural revitalization, promoting the common prosperity of farmers and rural areas, and realizing Chinese-style modernization. From the perspective of digital technology development in rural areas, this paper took 30 provincial-level regions in China as the research objects, and adopted the fixed-effects model and the spatial Durbin model to examine the intrinsic mechanism and the spatial spillover effect of the empowerment of digital technology to increase farmers′ income. The study found that: (1) the development of digital technology in rural areas significantly promotes farmers′ income growth, and the income-generating effect of digital technology is more significant in the central and western regions; (2) in terms of the transmission mechanism, easing the urban-rural divide, helping farmers start their own businesses, and improving rural human capital is an important path to give full play to the income-generating effect of digital technology in rural areas; (3) while empowering farmers to increase their income in their own regions, digital technology in rural areas also has a significant impact on the income-generating effect of farmers in neighboring regions, and at the same time, it has a positive spillover effect on the income increase of farmers in neighboring areas, thus presenting the characteristics of H-H agglomeration and L-L agglomeration. On the basis of quantitative measurement of the development level of digital technology in rural areas, this paper incorporated digital technology and farmers′ income increase into a unified research framework, and put forward some feasible suggestions from the perspectives of increasing investment in the construction of digital infrastructure in rural areas, strengthening regional collaboration, and taking multiple initiatives to broaden the channels of farmers′ income increase, in order to provide a theoretical and practical basis for the promotion of digital technology-enabled farmers′ income increase.

Key words: digital technology, farmers′ income increase, heterogeneity, action mechanism, spatial spillover effect