Digitalization and Agricultural Economic Resilience: a Systematic Examination Using Chinese City-level Panel Data
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: As digital technologies increasingly enter the agricultural sector, the digital economy has become closely linked to agricultural economic resilience. Using city-level panel data for 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2022, this study constructs composite indices of agricultural economic resilience and digital economy development and applies a fixed-effects model to examine their relationship. The results show that digital economy development is positively associated with agricultural economic resilience. This association remains broadly stable across alternative index construction methods and sample adjustments. Heterogeneity analysis further suggests that the relationship differs across regions and stages of digital development. The positive association is statistically significant in eastern and central China, but not in western China. The stage-based results suggest that the positive association between digital economy development and agricultural economic resilience is mainly observed in cities with low levels of digital development. In the medium- and high-digitalization groups, the estimated coefficients are statistically insignificant. This pattern is consistent with the possibility of diminishing marginal returns to digitalization. However, the coefficient in the low-digitalization group is significant only at the 10% level, and formal coefficient-difference tests are not reported. Therefore, the stage heterogeneity result should be interpreted as suggestive rather than conclusive.
Institution: Maejo University
Language: Thai
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7219254388