The empowerment of agricultural new quality productive forces by digital economy: Theoretical mechanisms and empirical verification

In the context of the accelerated global digital transformation, the digital economy has emerged as a crucial engine driving the development of agricultural new quality productive forces. Conducting in-depth research on how the digital economy empowers agricultural new quality productive forces is of both theoretical and practical significance for accelerating the modernization of agriculture and promoting its high-quality development. This study, based on panel data from 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities, not including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan of China) from 2012 to 2022, empirically investigates the empowerment of agricultural new quality productive forces by the digital economy. By constructing evaluation systems for both the digital economy and agricultural new productive forces, the key findings are as follows: 1) The digital economy can effectively promote the development of agricultural new quality productive forces. The digital economy significantly promotes the development of agricultural new quality productive forces. 2) Digital literacy among human capital plays a crucial role as the enabling link for the digital economy’s empowerment of agricultural new quality productive forces. 3) The impact of the digital economy on agricultural new quality productive forces exhibits regional heterogeneity, with the overall pattern of western > eastern > central regions. 4) The digital economy exerts a significant positive effect on agricultural laborers, agricultural labor objects, and agricultural means of production, with the most substantial effect on agricultural means of production, and a relatively smaller impact on agricultural labor objects. 5) The promoting effect of the digital economy on agricultural new quality productive forces is subject to threshold effects related to economic development and urbanization levels; as these thresholds increase, the role of the digital economy in enhancing agricultural new quality productive forces has become increasingly prominent, demonstrating a more robust driving trend. In view of this, this paper specifically proposes measures such as deepening the penetration of digital technologies and constructing a cultivation system for agricultural new quality productive forces; improving the upgrading path of human capital and activating the mediating effect of technology transfer; implementing a gradient regional development strategy to match the nonlinear enabling laws; and optimizing institutional supply to break through the bottleneck of the digitalization of the objects of labor. These measures aim to enhance the effect of the digital economy in empowering agricultural new quality productive forces.