Digital Village Policy and Relative Agricultural Economic Performance in China: Threshold Effects on Sustainable Agricultural Transformation

Sustaining agricultural economic performance under climate and market disruptions has become a strategic priority for developing economies facing escalating climate risks and persistent rural development challenges. Using an unbalanced panel of 281 prefecture-level cities in China (2011–2023), this study examines the association between the Digital Village Pilot policy and relative agricultural economic performance (RAEP)—a city’s agricultural growth measured against the national agricultural benchmark, which captures the resistance dimension (whether a city maintains its agricultural-economic position during disruptions) rather than the recovery, adaptability, ecological, or household-livelihood dimensions of the broader resilience concept—through difference-in-differences estimation, Hansen panel threshold regression, and a two-step channel analysis. The results indicate that the Pilot is associated with a statistically significant improvement in relative agricultural economic performance, an effect that remains broadly stable across specification checks. A threshold pattern emerges: the estimated policy association is negligible in city-year observations where digital infrastructure falls below an identified cutoff but rises substantially above it. Because a large share of cities falls below this threshold, the program’s benefits remain unevenly distributed. Channel analysis reveals that the Pilot is associated with a marginally significant increase in digital financial inclusion and a significant reduction in agricultural agglomeration, with the latter reflecting a shift toward diversified rather than spatially concentrated agricultural activity, a pattern theoretically linked to greater shock resistance. These findings advance understanding of how digital rural policies affect relative agricultural economic performance and provide empirical evidence for identifying the enabling conditions under which digital transformation strengthens sustainable agriculture.