ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics

Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1606799

This article is part of the Research TopicHarnessing Digital Innovation for Sustainable Agricultural DevelopmentView all 19 articles

The Impact of Information Infrastructure on Agricultural Industrial Structure Upgrading--A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on the "Broadband China" Strategy

Provisionally accepted
  • 南京农业大学金融学院, Nanjing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The development of information infrastructure constitutes an important driver for promoting high-quality agricultural development.Using panel data of 223 prefecture-level cities in China from 2010 to 2022, this paper employs the 'Broadband China' pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment and constructs a staggered DID model to examine the impact of information infrastructure on agricultural industrial structure upgrading.The results indicate that information infrastructure significantly facilitates the upgrading of the agricultural industrial structure, and the findings remain robust across a series of robustness checks. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive effects are more pronounced in regions with better traditional infrastructure, higher population density, central and eastern locations, and major grain-producing and marketing balance areas. Mechanism analysis suggests that information infrastructure alleviates the scarcity and mobility constraints of agricultural production factors, thereby promoting structural upgrading. Based on these findings, this study recommends continued investment in information infrastructure, acceleration of agricultural innovation, and enhancement of talent cultivation to advance agricultural industrial upgrading and build an agricultural powerhouse.

Keywords: information infrastructure, agricultural industrial structure upgrading, factor mobility constraint, Broadband China strategy, quasi-natural experiment

Received: 06 Apr 2025; Accepted: 30 May 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 huang, qian and wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: yajing wang, 南京农业大学金融学院, Nanjing, China

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