ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1607567
This article is part of the Research TopicHarnessing Digital Innovation for Sustainable Agricultural DevelopmentView all 23 articles
Impact of Digital Economy on Agricultural Green Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from the Quasi-Natural Experiment of the "Broadband China" Strategy
Provisionally accepted
Yuhui Cai*
Luanfeng Wang- School of Business, Hubei University, Wuhan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The empowerment of agricultural green transformation through the digital economy has emerged as a critical pathway toward sustainable development. Utilizing panel data from 286 Chinese cities spanning from 2011 to 2023, this study employs the "Broadband China" Strategy as a quasinatural experiment to construct a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model. We examine the impact of the digital economy (DE) on agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP), while also exploring its underlying mechanisms, heterogeneous characteristics, and spatial spillover effects. The findings reveal the following: (1) The DE significantly enhances AGTFP. (2) This enhancement is driven by green technology innovation, environmental regulation, and financial development. (3) The impact of DE on AGTFP varies across natural geographical factors and socio-economic factors. (4) Positive spatial spillover effects are observed in the impact of DE on AGTFP. This study highlights that to achieve sustainable agricultural growth, it is crucial to continuously promote rural digital economy development, leverage financial instruments to support agricultural green transformation, implement region-specific development strategies, and strengthen inter-regional cooperation and communication.
Keywords: digital economy, Agricultural green total factor productivity, "Broadband China" strategy, Difference-in-differences model, Financial Development
Received: 07 Apr 2025; Accepted: 20 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cai 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: Yuhui Cai, School of Business, Hubei University, Wuhan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.