Work

Connecting place-based heritage to platform markets: Rural actors, digital capacity and perceived market value in Fujian's tea industry

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Digitalisation can widen rural market reach, but for heritage agri-food products the problem is not only access: place-based meanings must remain legible as products move into platform markets. Using a survey of 671 tea-sector actors in Fujian Province, China, together with 15 supplementary semi-structured interviews, this study examines heterogeneous digital practices and the association between enacted digital capacity and perceived market value. Digital communication was hybrid rather than purely online: short video and livestreaming coexisted with tourism, heritage activities and continuing customer relations. Among tea farmers and enterprise actors, enacted digital capacity was positively associated with perceived market value in the fully adjusted model (N = 416; b = 0.409, robust SE = 0.025, p < 0.001), with similar positive patterns across alternative samples. The strongest reported communication constraints concerned content planning, expression and audiovisual production rather than equipment alone. Item-level diagnostics did not support a three-stage measurement structure separating cultural narrative translation, brand meaning and value capture. Accordingly, cultural narrative translation is treated as a process concept describing how territorially embedded knowledge is made legible to platform audiences, while perceived market value serves as the survey-based market outcome. The study advances rural digitalisation research by showing how digitalisation reorganises place-market relations through actor-differentiated capacities and hybrid local-platform infrastructures.

Source: Journal of Rural Studies

DOI: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2026.104453

Authors: Ying Song, Yuanping Cao

Institution: Wuyi University

Language: English

Topic: Digitalization and Economic Development in Agriculture

Subfield: Strategy and Management

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,090

Funders: Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, Wuyi University, Fujian Provincial Federation of Social Sciences