Impact of digital economy development on agricultural carbon emissions: evidence from scale and efficiency effects

Abstract

Agricultural digitalization is increasingly viewed as a key pathway to modernizing agriculture and advancing low-carbon transformation. Using provincial panel data from China spanning 2011–2022, this study examines how agricultural digitalization affects agricultural carbon emissions and carbon emission efficiency from the perspectives of scale effect and efficiency effect. A two-way fixed-effects model is employed as the main analytical approach. The results show that agricultural digitalization significantly improves agricultural carbon performance. Specifically, a 1% increase in the level of agricultural digitalization leads to a 15.72% reduction in total agricultural carbon emissions and a 3.97% improvement in carbon emission efficiency, indicating that both scale and efficiency effects are operative. Mechanism evidence suggests that, at the current stage, the mitigation effect primarily works through incremental innovation rather than breakthrough innovation. The carbon-reduction effect is stronger in southern China and in provinces with more advanced digital development, and digitalization also exhibits spatial spillover effects. These findings suggest that accelerating agricultural digitalization, while strengthening region-specific support and innovation incentives, can contribute to the transition toward low-carbon agriculture.