How digital empowerment enhances rural supply chain performance: evidence from Taobao villages in China

In the era of digital transformation, rural small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face challenges such as weak supplier integration, ineffective information transmission, and limited digital capabilities in supply chain management. These issues underscore the critical role of digital empowerment in enhancing rural supply chain performance. This study constructs and empirically tests a conceptual framework “digital empowerment–collaborative mechanism–performance enhancement” to explain how digital empowerment improves the performance and competitiveness of rural supply chains through supply chain collaboration. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), the study analyzes 263 valid survey responses collected from e-commerce supply chains in Zhejiang Province’s “Taobao Villages” and surrounding rural areas. The findings reveal that digital empowerment through structural empowerment, trust empowerment, and resource empowerment significantly enhances rural supply chain collaboration and performance, with policy support amplifying these effects. Moreover, supply chain collaboration is a key mediating variable in the relationship between digital empowerment and performance. While policy support significantly moderates the effects of structural development and resource acquisition, its moderating role in trust-based empowerment is insignificant. These findings offer practical insights for managers developing digital strategies and collaborative mechanisms and provide theoretical and policy implications for improving rural supply chain performance and promoting rural economic development.