Impacts and mechanisms of digital village construction on agricultural green total factor productivity

Green is the foundation of agricultural development. By leveraging modern information technology, digital village construction injects new momentum into the green growth of agriculture. Using balanced panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2011 to 2022, this paper employs the entropy approach and SBM-GML index to measure the indicators of digital village construction and agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP). The impacts and mechanisms of digital village construction on AGTFP are examined through fixed effect, mediating effect, and threshold models. The findings are as follows: (1) AGTFP in China shows an overall increasing trend from 2011 to 2022, with significant growth in the western region compared to the eastern and central regions. (2) Digital village construction significantly accelerates the improvement of AGTFP, a conclusion supported by robustness tests. (3) Mechanism analysis indicates that digital village construction advances AGTFP by fostering agricultural technology innovation, enhancing agricultural human capital, and improving agricultural productive services. (4) Digital village construction has a more significant impact on major grain-producing areas, economically underdeveloped areas, and northern region compared to other regions. (5) Environmental regulation acts as a threshold effect on the impact of digital village construction on AGTFP. Digital village construction substantially impacts AGTFP when environmental regulation is below the threshold, with the positive effect continuing beyond this point but at a reduced intensity.