Exploring the "Double-Edged Sword" effect of the digital economy on sustainable agricultural development: Evidence from China

The prolonged reliance on excessive resource utilization and unsustainable production methods has resulted in significant environmental issues in China, posing serious challenges to the sustainable development of agriculture. While the digital economy offers new opportunities for enhancing agricultural sustainability, its rapid and unregulated growth could also lead to negative effects. Therefore, exploring the relationship between the digital economy and sustainable agriculture development (SAD), along with clarifying the mechanisms involved, is of paramount importance. This study uses the EBM-GML index to calculate AGTFP as a representation of SAD and empirically tests the impact and mechanism of the digital economy on SAD. Additionally, it explores the moderating role of government behavior, specifically Agricultural fiscal support and digital policies. The main findings are as follows: (1) During the observation period, SAD showed a steady upward trend, but regional disparities widened, forming a contiguous agglomeration pattern. The decentralization of the digital economy weakened, trending towards unipolarization and homogenization, with a north-to-south diffusion. (2) The impact of the digital economy on SAD presents an inverted "U" shape, indicating a "double-edged sword" effect. This relationship remains significant after robustness and endogeneity tests. Additionally, the digital economy exhibits significant spatial effects, maintaining an inverted U-shaped relationship with SAD in neighboring areas. (3) Regional heterogeneity shows that coastal provinces are in digital economy suppression or alert areas, while inland regions are in enhancement areas. During the study period, the number of suppression and alert areas did not significantly increase, but there was a trend of shifting from coastal to inland regions. (4) When below the threshold, the digital economy promotes agricultural green technology innovation, optimizes resource allocation, and fosters synergetic agglomeration of agriculture with the secondary and tertiary industries, enhancing SAD. However, surpassing the threshold negatively impacts these mechanisms. (5) Fiscal support for agriculture smooths the inverted "U" curve, mitigating the negative impact of excessive digital economy growth on SAD. Conversely, digital policies steepen the inverted "U" curve, exacerbating these negative effects. The findings highlight the need for balanced digital economic development to support sustainable agricultural growth.