Abstract: The rural digital economy focuses on solving the practical problems of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", and radiates new vitality of farmers’ consumption expansion and structural upgrading. The existing literature rarely comprehensively investigates the dual effects of rural digital economy on the expansion and quality improvement of farmers’ consumption, and pays less attention to the relationship between consumption level and consumption structure. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces from 2013 to 2020, this paper analyzes the dual impact of rural digital economy on the "quantity" and "quality" of farmers’ consumption, and explores the impact mechanism through threshold effect and intermediary effect. The results show that rural digital economy can significantly improve the level and structure of farmers’ consumption. The marginal promotion effect of rural digital economy on Farmers’ consumption level shows an increasing trend. From the perspective of the mechanism of the impact of rural digital economy on Farmers’ consumption structure, the demand level is to increase farmers’ income, and the supply level is to promote the revitalization of rural industry and improve fairness. The heterogeneity study found that the rural digital economy has a stronger promotion on the consumption level and consumption structure of farmers in the eastern region. In addition, farmers’ consumption level is another important factor affecting consumption structure, and rural digital economy can promote the upgrading of consumption structure by improving farmers’ consumption level. The study deepens the understanding of the impact of rural digital economy on Farmers’ consumption, and provides policy implications for the incremental improvement of farmers’ consumption.

Key words: rural digital economy, farmers’ consumption level, consumption structure of farmers, digital consumption, rural revitalization