Abstract: Based on the survey data of poverty-stricken villages in Gansu Province, with endogeneity and heterogeneity taken into consideration, this paper uses TE and IVQTE models to study the impact of Internet use on the income of farmers in poverty-stricken areas. In order to explore the path of making full use of Internet to increase income and reduce poverty in poor areas, this paper identifies and measures the threshold of Internet. The results show that: (1) the Internet use significantly increases farmers’ income, and the marginal income of farmers using the Internet is as high as 1.25 after correcting endogenous errors; (2) the impact of Internet use on farmers’ income differs from one another. Specifically, the impact on farmers at low quantiles of income is significantly higher than that at high quantiles of income, that is, the Internet use reduces the income gap among farmers to a certain extent. And further research finds that the Internet has a greater effect on the income of poor households and is an effective way for poor households to increase their income. (3) there are thresholds for the impact of the Internet on the income of farmers. When the household Internet penetration rate and network cost increase to a certain value, the income effect of Internet increases obviously. However, 21.8% of the poor households and 3.3% of the non-poor households failed to reach the minimum threshold, and the distribution level of the poor households near the threshold value is inferior compared to that of the non-poor households, which makes it difficult for Internet to exert its income effect on some poor groups.

Key words: internet, poor areas, farmers’ income, threshold, poverty reduction