Abstract: The high-quality development of family farms is a booster for rural revitalization and agricultural modernization. Based on the data of three large-scale family farm surveys in 2018, 2019 and 2023, this paper empirically analyzes the samples of 961 family farms and explores the impact and mechanism of informatization on the business performance of family farms. The findings show that informatization can significantly improve the operational performance of family farms, and after a series of robustness tests, this conclusion still holds true. The mechanism analysis reveals that informatization can promote the application of green production technology and improves credit accessibility in family farms, thereby enhancing their business performance. The heterogeneity analysis shows that informatization has a better effect on improving the operational performance of integrated farming and breeding family farms, large and medium-sized family farms, and demonstration family farms. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the support for the informatization of family farms, guide family farms to apply green production technologies, alleviate the credit constraints of family farms, and establish a categorized and graded policy support system, so as to realize the positive role of informatization in improving the operational performance of family farms.

Key words: family farms, informatization, business performance, application of green production technology, credit accessibility