How Can Rural Online Shoppers Defend Their Rights? It Is Time for Institutional Development

However, in the course of development, rural e-commerce also faces an important problem, namely the difficulty of defending rights in online shopping consumption. Online shopping is, after all, different from shopping in physical stores: on the one hand, it involves the problem of counterfeit and shoddy goods, and on the other hand, it involves the problem of online consumer fraud. For example, a farmer in Liaocheng spent 4,200 yuan buying plastic film online, only to receive a counterfeit product that was completely unusable; another example is a farmer in Anqing who spotted a tricycle online and directly remitted 9,000 yuan to the other party, only to be scammed. Fake goods are hard to return, and there is nowhere to complain when fraud occurs; the inability to defend one's rights in online consumption is an unavoidable problem hindering the healthy development of rural e-commerce.

In fact, problems such as counterfeit and shoddy goods and consumer fraud in online consumption are not unique to rural e-commerce. In the field of internet e-commerce, there is no "urban-rural dichotomy"; whether urban residents or farmers, all face the same problems. The only difference is that, compared with urban residents, most farmers have weaker ability to tell genuine from fake goods when shopping online, weaker awareness of defending their rights, and a lack of legal knowledge on rights protection; moreover, rural areas lack rights-protection institutions and services, so defending rights in rural areas requires a very large amount of time and cost. Therefore, after their lawful rights and interests are infringed upon, most rural consumers choose to swallow their grievances and resign themselves to suffering in silence. Faced with this reality of farmers' inability to defend their consumer rights, some malicious merchants have even adopted a bad attitude of "serving different dishes to different customers", exploiting loopholes in the law: goods sent to remote rural areas are inferior in quality to similar goods, and shoddy goods are passed off as good ones, causing farmers unnecessary economic losses and dampening their enthusiasm for online consumption.

The development of rural e-commerce in our country is currently at an initial stage, and many models and institutions are still immature and await further exploration. At this time, phenomena that harm rural consumers are prone to appear, and it is also a critical period for establishing an institution for defending rights in rural online shopping consumption. Judging from the history of urban e-commerce development, a pattern has emerged: from the initial stage when incidents harming consumers emerged endlessly and consumers were powerless to defend their rights, to the current stage when consumer rights protection is relatively convenient and e-commerce enterprises are more self-disciplined. This is a development model of "pollute first, clean up later" in online consumer rights protection. Rural e-commerce is still at an initial stage, and farmers' online consumer rights protection cannot repeat this old path of "pollute first, clean up later". At the very beginning of development, the fence protecting farmers' online consumer rights must be firmly tightened and the institutional foundation well laid, which is crucial to the healthy development of rural e-commerce in the future.

Of course, solving this problem cannot rely solely on a single department or one force, but requires the coordinated efforts of multiple actors such as the government, industry associations, enterprises and farmers. From the government's side, on the one hand, it is necessary to improve relevant consumer rights protection laws and regulations, and at the same time, targeting rural areas, deploy rights-protection forces and further extend public rights-protection services to rural areas; on the other hand, it is necessary to strengthen education and publicity for farmers, improving their ability to tell genuine from fake goods in online consumption and their awareness of defending their rights according to law. From the industry associations' side, it is necessary to formulate industry codes of conduct, improve industry self-discipline, and establish an industry blacklist system: e-commerce enterprises that harm farmers should be placed on the blacklist and publicly announced to society. From the e-commerce enterprises' side, they must keep firmly in mind the concepts of lawful operation and honest operation, improve the level of after-sales service, and consciously and actively handle farmers' consumer rights protection. As for farmers, when their own rights and interests are harmed in online shopping, they should actively contact e-commerce enterprises to negotiate a settlement and seek help from relevant departments, and must not swallow their grievances, because that in itself is connivance at acts infringing upon farmers' consumer rights.

The development of rural e-commerce is in the ascendant. The emerging signs of infringement upon farmers' consumer rights must be contained and eradicated through institutional means. This is both a responsibility to and protection of farmers, and an important guarantee for rural e-commerce to develop in a healthier way and go further.