An Empirical Study on the Mechanism of Digital Economy on Digital Trust of the Aging Population from the Perspective of Chinese Modernization
Contemporary Chinese elders were born in pre-modern society,grew up in early modern society,and retired in digitized society,with their lifespans encompassing several hundred years of social development in the West.Rapid social transformation has significantly enriched their material lives,yet it has also led to doubts about the constancy of the society in which they live.The profound changes in society have dismantled the spatio-temporal environment that elders in China have relied upon for trust,and reshaping this trust must take into account the impacts of new economic forms under the new spatio-temporal order.However,the reconstruction of this trust cannot ignore the influence of new economic forms within the context of a new spatio-temporal background—Chinese Modernization.In digital era,the various forms of the digital economy,which epitomize the economic operational logic of this era,exert a significant role in building digital trust among the elders.This study targets at answering the following questions.First,does participation in the digital economy influence the construction of digital trust among the elderly?Second,if participation in the digital economy indeed impacts digital trust,how can the intrinsic mechanism between the two be effectively explained within a local context and through a modernization perspective?Lastly,starting from the particularity of local digital trust construction,what targeted improvements can be made to enhance digital trust among the local elderly population?By addressing these three questions,this paper seeks to reveal the crux of the deficiency in digital trust among the elders against the backdrop of Chinese modernization and to identify solutions.The data for this study are collected through a survey conducted jointly in six locations nationwide from 2021 to 2022 by the Social Trust Project Team at Xi'an Jiaotong University,supported by the key project of the National Social Science Fund.In the context of Chinese modernization,a dual-mediation model is constructed using the theories of modernity trust by Marx and Giddens,as well as Chinese trust theories by Fei Xiaotong and Zhai Xuewei.The propensity score matching method is utilized to systematically assess the causal effects of participation in the digital economy on the elderly's digital trust,thereby revealing the logical context and intrinsic mechanisms in the construction of elderly digital trust.The study's results indicate that,first,although a positive influence of digital economy participation on elderly digital trust is proved by the causal effects post-matching,certain degree of reduction is revealed when compared with the pre-matching effects.Second,the mediation model results suggest that participation in the digital economy reduced elderly digital trust through the"person to object"pathway via cognitive appraisal,while it increases digital trust through the"person to person"pathway via relationship commitment.Third,a comparison of mediation effects reveal that the positive impact through the"person to person"channel is significantly greater than the negative impact through the"person to object"channel.Finally,the"dual pathway"model of digital economy and digital trust constructed in this study indicate variations across different elderly groups.
Digital economy participationDigital trustAging populationChinese path to modernization
万方数据
