The Impact of Agricultural Digitalization on the Export Quality of China’s Agricultural Products

Abstract

As a key factor in promoting the prosperity of international trade, the quality of export products has increasingly become a focal point in the economic and trade development strategies of many countries. Based on provincial panel data from 30 provinces in China during the period 2011–2022, this paper employs the demand-information-inference method to estimate the export quality of agricultural products and applies panel data regression models to systematically analyze the impact of agricultural digitalization on export quality. The empirical results indicate that agricultural digitalization significantly enhances China’s agricultural export quality, and this conclusion is validated through various robustness checks, including controlling for multiple influencing factors, instrumental variable estimation, and robustness tests. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of agricultural digitalization is more pronounced in the central and eastern regions, in processed agricultural products, and at the levels of digital infrastructure and industrial digitalization. Mechanism analysis reveals that agricultural digitalization primarily drives improvements in export quality indirectly through two pathways: enhancing agricultural technological innovation and improving financial development. Based on these findings, this study recommends, at the policy level, accelerating the construction of digital agricultural infrastructure, strengthening the driving force of technological innovation, optimizing the rural digital financial system, implementing region-specific development strategies, and prioritizing the digital transformation of deep-processing sectors so as to comprehensively improve the export quality of China’s agricultural products.