Rural areas in low-income countries often face severe poverty typically caused by insufficient accessibility to basic facilities. Improvements in rural roads are expected to reduce poverty although the mechanism has not been investigated sufficiently. This study empirically analyzes the impacts of rural road improvements implemented from 2012 to 2014 in Cambodia, highlighting local residents’ accessibility to local markets. This study assumes two causal relationships: rural road improvements have upgraded the accessibility and travel frequency to local markets, and the upgraded accessibility and travel frequency to local markets have led to a growth in local residents’ income. The hypotheses are statistically tested with a dataset developed through a questionnaire survey conducted in three areas in 2016. The dataset contains responses from 400 local residents to questions concerning their social attributes, livelihoods, travel modes, travel frequency, and time/cost of travels to the basic facilities. The quasi-experimental design incorporating a difference-in-differences design and an inverse possibility of treatment weighting approach revealed that the improvements in rural roads did not affect travel time nor travel cost but significantly enhanced travel frequency to local markets, and that an increase in the travel frequency to local markets and travel time savings significantly contributed to the households’ income growth. The results suggest that the improvement of seasonal reliability in accessing local markets through an introduction of all-weather roads could be critical to enhance household income, particularly in areas where agriculture is a leading industry and weather conditions are unstable across seasons.

中文翻译：

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通过改善柬埔寨农村地区的市场准入，改善农村道路对家庭收入的影响

低收入国家的农村地区往往面临严重贫困，这通常是由于基本设施的可达性不足造成的。尽管尚未充分研究农村道路的改善机制，但有望减少贫困。本研究实证分析了 2012 年至 2014 年在柬埔寨实施的农村道路改善的影响，突出了当地居民进入当地市场的便利性。本研究假设有两个因果关系：农村道路的改善提高了当地市场的可达性和出行频率，以及提高了当地市场的可达性和出行频率，导致了当地居民收入的增长。这些假设通过 2016 年在三个领域进行的问卷调查开发的数据集进行了统计测试。该数据集包含 400 名当地居民对其社会属性、生计、出行方式、出行频率以及前往基本设施的时间/成本等问题的回答。包含差异中差异设计和逆可能性处理加权方法的准实验设计表明，农村道路的改善不影响出行时间和出行成本，但显着提高了前往当地市场的出行频率，并且增加了前往当地市场的旅行频率和旅行时间的节省显着促进了家庭的收入增长。结果表明，通过引入全天候道路提高进入当地市场的季节性可靠性对于提高家庭收入至关重要，