Digital economy drives green agricultural development: Internal mechanism and empirical test

The digital economy provides new opportunities for green agricultural development. Based on panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2011 to 2022, this study employed the CRITIC-entropy method to measure the digital economy development index and green agricultural development level. Subsequently, two-way fixed effects and mediating effect models were used to empirically analyze the impact and underlying mechanisms of the digital economy on green agricultural development. The results indicated that the digital economy significantly promoted green agricultural development at the 1% level. After a series of robustness tests, including altering the observation period, excluding municipalities, and changing the measurement methods of explanatory variables, the conclusions remained valid. Mechanism analysis revealed that the digital economy facilitated green agricultural development through scientific and technological innovation, industrial structure optimization, and socialized agricultural services. Further research showed that the promoting effect of the digital economy on green agricultural development was significant across major and non-major grain-producing areas, as well as across eastern, western, southern, and northern regions. Based on these findings, this study proposes policy suggestions, such as strengthening the application of digital technology in green agricultural development, prioritizing scientific and technological innovation, accelerating the optimization of industrial structure and the development of agricultural socialized services, and formulating differentiated development strategies. The marginal contributions of this study are as follows: 1) The CRITIC-entropy weighting method is applied to construct evaluation indicators, thereby expanding the approach to measuring the digital economy and green agricultural development. 2) This study deeply analyzes the impact and mechanisms through which the digital economy drives green agricultural development, contributing to the enrichment and improvement of relevant theories of green agricultural development. 3) By considering regional heterogeneity, the study identifies differences in the digital economy’s effects on green agricultural development across different regions and offers more targeted policy recommendations.