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

In the context of accelerated global digital transformation, the digital economy has emerged as a crucial driver of 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. Based on panel data from 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities, not including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan of China) in China from 2012 to 2022, this study empirically investigates the empowerment of agricultural new quality productive forces by the digital economy. By constructing comprehensive evaluation index systems for both the digital economy and agricultural new quality productive forces, the key findings are as follows. 1) The development level of digital economy can effectively promote the development of agricultural new quality productive forces. 2) Digital literacy in human capital plays a crucial role as an enabling link to the digital economy empowering agricultural new quality productive forces. 3) The impact of development level of digital economy on agricultural new quality productive forces exhibites regional heterogeneity, with an overall pattern of western region > eastern region > central region. 4) The development level of digital economy exerts a significant positive impact on agricultural labor force, object of agricultural labor, and agricultural production input, with the most substantial impact on agricultural production input and a relatively smaller impact on object of agricultural labor. 5) The promoting impact of the development level of 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 development level of digital economy in enhancing agricultural new quality productive forces has become increasingly prominent, demonstrating a more robust driving trend. In view of this, this study 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 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 impacts of the digital economy empowering agricultural new quality productive forces.