Digitalization and Agricultural Green Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from China

Qixuan Zhang, Yuxin Yang, Xue Li () and Pingping Wang ()
Additional contact information
Qixuan Zhang: International College Beijing, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China
Yuxin Yang: College of Letters & Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
Xue Li: Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
Pingping Wang: International College Beijing, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China

Agriculture, 2024, vol. 14, issue 10, 1-13

Abstract: Based on panel data of 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in China from 2011 to 2022, this paper empirically examines the impact of digitalization on the inputs and outputs of the agricultural production process, and thereby derives the effects and mechanisms by which digitalization empowers the growth of agricultural green total factor productivity. The study finds that agricultural and rural areas’ digitalization significantly improves agricultural green total factor productivity, and this promotion mainly comes from the improvement of technical efficiency. Further analysis shows that digitalization mainly reduces land input and labor input, increases expected output, and reduces undesired output during the agricultural production process to achieve an improvement in agricultural green total factor productivity, indicating that digitalization has altered the allocation of agricultural factors. Heterogeneity analysis finds that the effect of digitalization on the growth of agricultural green total factor productivity is more pronounced in the eastern regions, southern regions, and areas with higher levels of agricultural digitalization, indicating that the development of digitalization exacerbates the gap in agricultural green total factor productivity among regions.

Keywords: agriculture; rural areas; digitalization; green total factor productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/10/1805/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/10/1805/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:14:y:2024:i:10:p:1805-:d:1497985

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().