1. Introduction
With the progress of digital technology, the promotion of rural economic development has gradually become an important factor. The development of industrial digitalization and digital industrialization has further promoted the formation of data as a key production factor. As the digital economy is leading the transformation of the rural agricultural production mode, accelerating the structural optimization and innovation of traditional agriculture, it is playing an important role in improving the total factor productivity of agriculture and realizing the deep integration of real industries. In recent years, emerging technologies, such as big data and artificial intelligence, have become important breakthroughs in upgrading the economic structure and accelerating traditional industries’ transformation. The development of the digital economy has formed a variety of new industries and new formats. The expansion of the scale effect has promoted industrial integration, and the platform effect has fostered the deep integration of industries. Due to the combination of digital technology and industrial integration, the industry has developed rapidly and formed “new industry integration”. As an emerging digital industry, digital technology is rapidly breaking through and being widely applied, swiftly penetrating into different industries. The digital economy has formed a scale, and the scale effect can be brought into play. It has become an important factor in promoting new economic development and is conducive to promoting the formation and development of new industries and new formats [
1]. The digital economy has become an important driving force for economic growth and scale expansion, rapidly transformed the old driving force into a new driving force, caused changes in the connotation, space, and field of industrial development, and played a key role in upgrading low-end industries to mid-to-high-end industries, thereby enhancing industrial competitiveness [
2]. The improvement and promotion of the digital infrastructure and technology level have increased, promoted the flow of information factors and the allocation efficiency of factor resources, and laid a solid foundation for industrial development [
3]. With digital technology as the starting point, industries’ deep integration as the development direction, and the digital service platform as the support, a digital economic model and pattern integrating network, service, and precision will be formed [
4]. With the continuous improvement of the network infrastructure, digital technology has accelerated its diffusion to the agricultural field, which has promoted farmers’ entrepreneurial probability, increased their income, optimized the agricultural production system, and improved agricultural quality, efficiency, and competitiveness [
5,
6]. It can be concluded that the rapid development of the digital economy accelerated the digital transformation, drove the economic society, profoundly changed the production, life, thinking, and governance mode of human beings, promoted the agricultural transformation and rural industries integration, and affected agriculture’s sustainable development [
7]. How the current digital economy development affects agriculture’s sustainable development and through what path, as well as what role the factor allocation plays in this process, are still issues worthy of attention.
Agricultural development needs to solve the problems of agricultural production efficiency and agricultural development power, improve the cultivation and operation efficiency of business entities, and ensure efficient allocation of resource elements and agricultural product supply efficiency. The digital economy plays an important role in this process, but there are still problems, such as the lag of digital agricultural transformation, insufficient technological innovation ability, and lack of talent [
8]. With the deepening of the digital economy’s development, the agricultural industry is seeking balanced development between industries and regions. However, the flow and convergence of high-quality resources from rural areas to cities leads to the loss of a large number of high-quality resources in rural areas and causes rural hollowing out. At the same time, the problem of farmers’ aging is becoming increasingly serious and leading to the decline of rural areas [
9]. With the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, preferential policies were put forward in terms of talent, land use, and capital, which led to the return of some factors. Through the allocation of talents, technology, and information, the interaction and complementarity between industries and regions will promote the in-depth development of industrial integration. The digital economy plays an important role in this process. However, at the present stage, there is a big gap between provinces in agricultural figures’ development, showing that one province takes the lead and starts rapidly. The digital economy is important in increasing farmers’ income channels, transforming the development mode of agricultural production, and promoting the modernization of rural areas [
10]. Lin and Mao (2022), based on provincial panel data, believed that the digital economy supports the improvement of agricultural total factor productivity, but the performance differs between regions, especially in the eastern and central regions [
11]. Jiang (2022) thought that the digital economy promoted the agricultural transformation and agricultural industry integration, thus fostering agricultural development, but there were some problems in this process, such as the digital divide, infrastructure, talent support, and so on [
7]. Li and Zhou (2022) assert that the digital economy promotes the change in agricultural technology conditions and the effective integration of digital technology, digital technology supports the digital transformation of agricultural mechanization [
12,
13], and the digital economy promotes high-quality development of agriculture through different paths [
14,
15].
Based on the above literature, the research objectives of this paper are twofold. First, it is necessary and important to develop the digital economy, but little attention has been paid to how it affects the sustainable development of agriculture. With regard to the digital economy and the sustainable development of agriculture, research has mainly focused on the micro-subject of the combination of the digital economy and actual production [
16]. Most of the relevant studies have not completely solved the problems of agriculture and rural areas. The only relevant studies have focused on the integration of the digital economy and a certain link with agricultural development and have not obtained an effective empirical research basis. There is still a lack of research on the production, circulation, and distribution links between the sustainable development of agriculture and the digital economy. This paper theoretically confirms their relevance to each other, brings the digital economy and sustainable agricultural development into the same framework and introduces emerging digital technology into sustainable agricultural development. Second, the digital economy is an important factor in production. How can it promote the sustainable development of agriculture? This needs to be verified empirically. Based on the dynamic perspective, this paper reveals the correlation mechanism between the two, emphasizes the direct effect of the digital economy on the sustainable development of agriculture, and explores how the digital economy affects the allocation of factors and, thus, shows the indirect effect of the sustainable development of agriculture from the perspective of the mismatch of labor and capital factors.
To achieve the expected goal, this paper will expand on and supplement the following aspects. First, the measurement of the digital economy has not yet formed a unified standard, and it is difficult to give a standard definition of the digital economy in theory, which leads to confusion in the definition and an unclear division, increasing the complexity involved in the measurement of the digital economy [
17,
18,
19]. In this paper, a digital economy indicator system is constructed from the multi-dimensional aspects of digital construction, digital application, and digital industry development, which to some extent, mitigates the difficulty in measuring the digital economy. Agricultural development needs to consider multiple links of production, circulation, and distribution. Sustainable agricultural development cannot be measured with a single indicator. Reconstruction of the indicator system of sustainable agricultural development from the perspective of agricultural production, the circulation of agricultural products, and farmers’ income can reflect the process of agricultural development and promote sustainable agricultural development. The quantification of the digital economy and sustainable agricultural development uses the entropy method to synthesize them and calculate a comprehensive index. Second, research on the development of the digital economy in agriculture has been relatively limited, mainly due to the complexity of agricultural development and strong resource endowment [
15,
20]. The development and application of the digital economy in agriculture are relatively backward. Relevant research has focused on the digital economy and industrial structure, industrial chain, industrial integration, and so on [
2,
4,
7,
21]. Few documents have taken the digital economy as an element from the perspective of its impact on the allocation of elements and then on agricultural development. From the perspective of factor allocation, this paper describes the direct and indirect impacts of the digital economy on the sustainable development of agriculture, provides a theoretical basis and practical evidence showing how the digital economy enables the sustainable development of agriculture, and explores the feasible path.
The structure of the article is as follows: (1) theoretical construction and research hypotheses; (2) research methods and data; (3) empirical analysis; and (4) research conclusions and policy implications.
4. Empirical Analysis
4.1. Sample Selection and Data Source
This paper selects panel data from the eastern, central, and western regions of China from 2013 to 2020. Among them, the eastern region contains 11 provinces (cities), specifically Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong, and Hainan; the central region consists of 8 provinces, namely, Shanxi, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei, and Hunan; and the western region is made up of 11 provinces (cities and autonomous regions), specifically Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang. The data regarding the digital economy and sustainable agricultural development are mainly from “the China Statistical Yearbook (2014–2021)”. Some of the missing data are from “the China Rural Statistical Yearbook”, statistical yearbooks of various provinces, and the website of the National Bureau of Statistics. Since most of the data are available until 2020, the article selects the data from 2013 to 2020. At the same time, the sample excludes Tibet because there are too much missing data. The original data for the intermediary variables are from “the China Statistical Yearbook” and “the China Rural Statistical Yearbook”. The control variables are rural infrastructure, financial support for agriculture, and the accounting of rural human capital from “the China Statistical Yearbook, “the China Rural Statistical Yearbook”, “the China Population and Employment Statistical Yearbook”, and so on. The data on agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery loans are mainly from “the China Financial Yearbook”, and some data are collated through “the China Rural Financial Services Report”.
4.2. Descriptive Statistics
To clarify the impact mechanism between the digital economy and sustainable agricultural development, this paper describes and analyses the interpreted variables, core explanatory variables, intermediary variables, and control variables statistically, as shown in
Table 3.
According to
Table 3, the average level of the digital economy is only 0.231, and the standard deviation is 0.175. This shows preliminarily judges that China’s digital economy is still relatively small, and there are significant differences between different regions, which means that digital development is uneven. The development of the digital economy has the great potential [
56]. The average value of the sustainable agricultural development level is only 0.276, and the standard deviation is 0.184. The difference between different regions is obvious. Therefore, it is judged that the level of sustainable agricultural development needs to be improved. The digital economy may be an important factor affecting the level of sustainable agricultural development. As can be seen from the labor misallocation index and capital misallocation index, both labor and capital show an over-allocation of factors. However, there are differences between the two. The differences in labor factor misallocation are not obvious, while the differences in capital misallocation are relatively large.
4.3. Analysis of Basic Regression Results
Equation (1) and the data from 2013 to 2020 are used for the benchmark regression, and columns (1) and (2) in
Table 4 are based on the national level. Column (1) in
Table 4, which does not contain the control variables, shows the impact of the digital economy on sustainable agricultural development. Its coefficient is positive and passes the 1% significance test, indicating that the digital economy can better promote sustainable agricultural development. To test the robustness of this conclusion, column (2) in
Table 4 contains the control variables. It is found that the estimated coefficient has decreased but is still positive and passes the 1% significance test, which means that there is a problem of missing important explanatory variables. After adding control variables, the role of the digital economy in promoting sustainable agricultural development is still valid, which indicates that the role of the digital economy in promoting sustainable agricultural development is stable. Digitalization plays an important role in agricultural development [
57]. This is consistent with the research from the micro-perspective of agricultural enterprises [
16,
58].
There may be two main reasons for this result. First, with the progress of technology, the digital economy plays an increasingly important role. There is not only a large-scale economic effect but also an increasing marginal return effect. The use of digital technology improves the efficiency of resource utilization and forms a digital circular economy [
37]. Second, the digital economy needs to rely on the existence of traditional factors, such as labor and capital, to a certain extent to promote the rapid aggregation of these production factors, improve the allocation efficiency of labor and capital factors, and transform the idle simple labor subject to technical knowledge into complex utility labor, creating an efficient labor force from the low-skilled labor to achieve an effective allocation of factors [
59,
60]. Third, the digital economy promotes the continuous optimization of the traditional economic model, forms new industries, new formats, and new models, drives intensive integration, collaborative development, efficient utilization, and other new drivers of factors, and greatly expands the scope of the digital economy.
Due to the differences in the sustainable development of agriculture in different regions, the impact of the digital economy on the sustainable development of agriculture is also different. Therefore, this paper needs to perform regression for different regions, dividing the country into the eastern, central, and western regions. The results are shown in
Table 4. According to the results, the digital economy in the eastern, central, and western regions has a positive impact on sustainable agricultural development and passes the 1% significance test, which means that, with the improvement of the digital economy and the deepening of the digital degree, sustainable agricultural development will be further improved. After adding control variables, the impact of the digital economy on sustainable agricultural development in the eastern, central, and western regions is still positive, the impact coefficient decreases and the impact passes the 1% significance test, which verifies the stability of the conclusion. It further shows that the impact of the digital economy on sustainable agricultural development has not changed due to regional differences, indicating that the conclusion is reliable and stable.
Comparing the eastern, central, and western regions, the digital economy has a prominent impact on the sustainable agricultural development of the central region, followed by the western region, and that in the eastern region is relatively weak. The possible reason is that the eastern region mainly focuses on manufacturing and service industries, and the agricultural development foundation is relatively weak. Although the digital economy started earlier in the eastern region, it mainly plays a role in the manufacturing and service industries. The central region is different, with a far larger proportion of agriculture than the eastern region. The agricultural industrial structure and layout have certain advantages, which are conducive to improving the competitiveness of agricultural quality, and the rise of agriculture has become an important support for the rise of the central region [
61]. The introduction of the digital economy will accelerate sustainable agricultural development. Affected by natural factors, such as climate, the western region has witnessed a rapid development of characteristic agriculture. The introduction of the digital economy has further accelerated agriculture and sustainable agricultural development.
4.4. The Intermediary Effect of Factor Allocation
Table 5 and
Table 6 list the intermediary effect test results of labor factor misallocation and capital factor misallocation in the digital economy, enabling sustainable agricultural development. Columns (1), (3), (5), and (7) of
Table 5 and
Table 6, respectively, present the results estimated according to Equation (3) on the national level, in the eastern region, in the central region, and in the western region, that is, the impact of the digital economy on labor and capital allocation. Both the national level and the sub-regional levels show that the estimated coefficients of the digital economy on the labor factor misallocation index and the capital factor misallocation index are negative, and both pass the 1% significance test. These results indicate that the digital economy can reduce the level of labor factor misallocation and capital misallocation, but the impact differs between regions.
Columns (2), (4), (6), and (8) of
Table 5 and
Table 6 list the estimation results based on Equation (4) at the national level and in the eastern region, central region, and western region; that is, factor allocation is the intermediary effect of the digital economy on sustainable agricultural development. At the national level, the estimated coefficient of the digital economy for sustainable agricultural development is positive and passes the 1% significance test. Compared with
Table 5 and
Table 6, the estimated coefficient has decreased.
Table 5 and
Table 6 show that the digital economy significantly reduces the labor and capital misallocation indexes. The estimation coefficient of the digital economy for sustainable agricultural development is positive, and the estimation coefficient of the labor and capital misallocation indexes for sustainable agricultural development is negative. This shows that the digital economy can promote sustainable agricultural development by reducing the level of factor misallocation and verifies Hypothesis H2 and Hypothesis H3. From the regional perspective, the digital economy in the eastern, central, and western regions promotes sustainable agricultural development through labor factor allocation, and this passes the 1% significance test, but the performance of capital factor allocation is different. The digital economy in the eastern region promotes sustainable agricultural development through capital factor allocation and passes the 1% significance test. Although the impact of capital factor allocation on sustainable agricultural development in the central and western regions is positive, it does not pass the significance test.
Through the intermediary effect formulas and , the intermediary effect of factor allocation is obtained. At the national level, the intermediary effect of labor factor allocation is greater than that of capital factor allocation, which means that the digital economy can optimize the allocation of labor and capital factors but that their impacts are different. It also shows that the digital economy is more effective in reducing labor misallocation and improving labor allocation efficiency, but the performance of different regions is slightly different. In the eastern and western regions, the development of the digital economy is more conducive to the allocating of capital elements, reducing the distortion of capital elements, and improving the efficiency of capital element allocation. The digital economy in the central region is more supportive of the allocation of labor elements. From the perspective of the intermediary effect, the intermediary effect of labor factor allocation is greater in the whole country than in the central part and greater in the east than in the west. The intermediary effect of capital factor allocation is shown to be greater in the east than in the whole country and greater in the west than in the center. The continuous flow of the digital economy across the country has a scale effect and improves the allocation of factors. The eastern region is relatively developed, and the development of digital technology facilities is relatively complete. At the same time, the eastern region has greater advantages in science and technology, talents, finance, and so on. The digital economy in the eastern region has a greater impact on the efficiency of capital allocation.
4.5. Robustness Test
To determine whether the above conclusions are robust, the intermediary variable uses factor allocation efficiency. The measure of the factor allocation efficiency follows the DEA method, and the regional regression is conducted according to Equations (2)–(4). The results show that the development of the digital economy can improve the efficiency of factor allocation and that the digital economy can promote sustainable agricultural development through the improvement of factor allocation efficiency. The intermediary effect of the digital economy in the eastern, central, and western regions is tested, respectively. It shows that the digital economy in the eastern, central, and western regions significantly promotes sustainable agricultural development, and the allocation efficiency coefficient is positive, which means that the digital economy optimizes the allocation of labor and capital elements and improves the efficiency of factor allocation. The results of the digital economy optimizing the traditional factor allocation in different regions to promote sustainable agricultural development are still valid. The estimation results verify the above conclusions, indicating that the conclusions in this paper are reliable.
5. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations
Based on the typical fact that the digital economy has driven economic and social development, accelerated digital transformation, profoundly affected the direction and path of agricultural transformation and rural industrial integration, and promoted sustainable agricultural development, this paper used panel data from 30 provinces from 2013 to 2020 to explore the impact of the digital economy on sustainable agricultural development by using a panel data model and an intermediary effect model on the basis of an indicator system of the digital economy and sustainable agricultural development. By introducing the intermediary variable of factor allocation, this paper analyzed the transmission mechanism of the digital economy to sustainable agricultural development and drew the following conclusions.
First, at the national level, the digital economy has played a significant positive role in sustainable agricultural development; that is, the digital economy has significantly promoted the sustainable development of agriculture, which means that, with the deepening of the digital economy, agriculture has also developed. When the control variable was introduced, this conclusion remained valid, which meant that the impact of the digital economy on the sustainable development of agriculture was robust. At the regional level, the digital economy still played a role in promoting the sustainable development of agriculture, but the degree of impact had obvious differences. The central region was the most prominent, followed by the western region, and the eastern region was relatively weak. This indicated that it is necessary to adjust measures to local conditions and formulate relevant policies in different regions.
Second, there were different degrees of labor factor mismatch and capital factor mismatch in all provinces, and the digital economy had a significant positive impact on the optimization of labor and capital factor allocation. This meant that the input of the digital economy increased the input scale of high-end factors and reduced the distortion coefficient of factor allocation, which was conducive to improving the mismatch of capital factors and played an important role in improving the mismatch of labor factors.
Third, at the national level, the digital economy improved sustainable agricultural development by reducing the misallocation of labor and capital allocation. At the regional level, the level of sustainable agricultural development in the eastern region depended on the optimization effect of the digital economy on the allocation of labor and capital. While the level of sustainable agricultural development in the central and western regions depended on the optimization effect of the digital economy on the allocation of labor factors, although the allocation effect of capital factors had a positive impact on sustainable agricultural development, it did not pass the significance test.
With the deepening of digitalization, relevant questions are how to improve the allocation of factors through the digital economy and how to improve the role of the digital economy in promoting the sustainable development of agriculture. Based on the above conclusions, different policy recommendations are put forward.
The first recommendation is to strengthen infrastructure construction and improve the digital technology environment. By strengthening the construction of digital agricultural infrastructure, we can vigorously popularize basic information projects in rural areas, especially remote areas, and comprehensively promote the extension of digital technology to rural areas or agricultural industrial parks. We can pilot new digital technologies in some regions to narrow the “digital gap” between urban and rural areas. Through digital platforms, we can provide digital information services for farmers. According to agricultural resource endowment, we can implement heterogeneous agricultural development policies in different regions to reduce agricultural production costs, optimize the circulation of agricultural products, and increase farmers’ income.
The second recommendation is to strengthen the development of the digital economy and give full play to the allocation effect of digital elements, use digital technology to promote the effective allocation of labor and capital, reduce the degree of mismatch, improve the allocation efficiency, improve the allocation of factor markets, and optimize the allocation structure. We can make full use of the scale economy effect of the digital economy, change the development mode from “input of traditional factors such as labor and capital” to “digital economy + optimization of factor allocation”, and gradually cultivate the digital economy as a new driving force for sustainable agricultural development.
The third recommendation is to pay attention to the effective connection between the digital economy and agricultural development and promote the deep integration of digital technology and agriculture. As an emerging economy, we need to consolidate the foundation further and cultivate the application of digital technology and other emerging elements in rural economic development. In combination with the current development of digital technology, we can strengthen the connection between digital technology and agriculture and make agricultural production, circulation, and distribution progress to achieve high quality. We can gradually promote the deep integration of digital technology and agriculture by way of points, lines, and surfaces, optimize new technologies, new formats, new models, and new products in the agricultural field, improve agricultural productivity and optimize the structure of agricultural products. Compared with the central and western regions, the eastern regions have the advantages of science and technology, talents, and capital. The central and western regions should improve the level of digital technology and strengthen the integration of the digital economy and sustainable agricultural development.