Digitalisation and Sustainable Agriculture: A PRISMA-Based Systematic Literature Review
TL;DR
This systematic literature review critically examines the impact of digitalisation on sustainable agricultural development, synthesising empirical evidence published between 2015 and 2026 using a combined deductive–inductive thematic approach and identifies four priority directions for future research.
Abstract
This systematic literature review critically examines the impact of digitalisation on sustainable agricultural development, synthesising empirical evidence published between 2015 and 2026. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, 62 empirical studies indexed in Scopus and Web of Science were identified and analysed using a combined deductive–inductive thematic approach. The analysis is structured around a triple-bottom-line framework encompassing economic, environmental, and social sustainability dimensions. The review addresses two research questions: the geographical and temporal distribution of research on digitalisation and agricultural sustainability, and the extent to which digitalisation yields both beneficial and adverse outcomes across all three dimensions. The findings reveal a sharp increase in scholarly attention after 2022, with strong geographical concentration in Asia, particularly China, while evidence from developing regions remains comparatively limited. Overall, existing research predominantly highlights positive effects, particularly productivity gains, efficiency improvements, and income growth, alongside enhanced environmental performance through resource optimisation and emission reduction. However, the evidence also documents uneven and context-dependent outcomes, especially within the social dimension, including labour displacement, rising inequality, and digital wage opacity. Crucially, integrative analyses that examine all three sustainability dimensions simultaneously remain scarce; fewer than 5% of included studies address economic, environmental, and social outcomes together, and potential trade-offs among dimensions are insufficiently explored. By synthesising fragmented empirical evidence through an explicit analytical framework, this review provides a comprehensive and critical foundation for understanding the complex, uneven, and context-dependent impacts of digitalisation on sustainable agriculture and identifies four priority directions for future research.