Digital Economy, Agricultural Technological Innovation, and Agricultural Economic Resilience: A Sustainable Agricultural Development Perspective

Digital economy and agricultural technological innovation are key drivers of agricultural economic resilience and sustainable development. However, existing research has yet to clarify how they jointly affect agricultural economic resilience, particularly through potential nonlinear patterns and spatial spillover effects. Using panel data from 30 Chinese provinces, this study measures digital economy development and agricultural economic resilience via the entropy weight method. It systematically examines the direct impact, transmission mechanisms, threshold effects, and spatial spillover effects using two-way fixed effects, mediation, threshold regression, and spatial Durbin models. The findings are as follows. First, the digital economy significantly improves agricultural economic resilience, a result robust to various tests and endogeneity treatments. Second, agricultural technological innovation plays a partial mediating role, accounting for 19.37% of the total effect. Third, the resilience-enhancing effect of agricultural technological innovation exhibits a double-threshold pattern: its positive impact gradually strengthens as the digital economy develops to a higher level. Fourth, the digital economy generates a positive spatial spillover effect on agricultural economic resilience. Fifth, although the digital economy and agricultural technological innovation show synergistic development, their coupling coordination degree remains relatively low, indicating substantial untapped potential for synergy. From a sustainable development perspective, this study reveals the mechanisms through which the digital economy and agricultural technological innovation enhance agricultural economic resilience, providing empirical evidence and policy insights for strengthening agricultural risk resistance and achieving agricultural sustainability via digital transformation and technological progress.