Empowered or Negative? Research on the Impact of Industrial Agglomeration on the Development of Agricultural New Quality Productive Forces: Evidence from Shandong Province, China

Realizing the SDGs is a core issue of global development. In this regard, China has put forward a new quality productive forces development path with innovative thinking, providing systematic solutions for sustainable transformation through factor allocation optimization and whole-chain innovation drive. In the agricultural sector, industrial agglomeration is one of the factors affecting the development of new quality productive forces, with a spatial layout that can improve the efficiency of agricultural production and the effective utilization of resources. This paper investigates the impact of agricultural industry agglomeration on new quality productive forces by using the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to measure the relevant data of 16 prefecture-level cities in Shandong, China, from 2010 to 2022. The results show the following: (1) The spatial patterns of agricultural industry agglomeration and new quality productive forces in Shandong Province have been evolving, showing an obvious spatial correlation and “high in the south and low in the north” and “high in the north and low in the south” spatial patterns, respectively. (2) From a global perspective, industrial agglomeration has significant negative direct and indirect effects on the development of agricultural new quality productive forces, and this conclusion still holds after robustness testing. (3) From a local perspective, the impact of agricultural industry agglomeration on new quality productive forces is regionally heterogeneous. In the central economic zone, the impact is positive, while in the western and eastern economic zones, it is negative. This research provides a theoretical basis for optimizing the spatial layout of the agricultural industry and constructing a sustainable productivity system.