Technology Empowerment, Industrial Support, and Welfare Orientation: Coupling Coordination and Synergistic Evolution Mechanisms of Digital Villages, Agricultural Modernization, and Farmers’ Objective Well-Being

At the critical stage of China’s comprehensive advancement of rural revitalization and the construction of a Digital China, promoting the coordinated development of digital villages, agricultural modernization and farmers’ objective well-being is essential for addressing the “three rural” issues. Taking 30 Chinese provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) as the research object, this study systematically evaluates the comprehensive development levels of the three systems from 2011 to 2024 using the entropy method, the coupling coordination degree model, and the GTWR model. It analyzes the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of their coupling coordination and identifies the influencing factors through rigorous testing. The main findings are as follows: (1) From 2011 to 2024, the comprehensive evaluation scores of the three systems in all provinces exhibited a continuous upward trend, with growth rates initially stable and then accelerating. However, prominent regional imbalances persist, characterized by a spatial pattern of “high in the east, low in the west, and rising in the middle”. (2) The coupling coordination degree of the three systems remains at a medium level but shows an overall upward trend, and the number of provinces achieving primary or higher coordination has significantly increased. (3) Government, market, and social factors exert spatially heterogeneous effects on coupling coordination. Through mechanisms such as compensating for shortcomings, offsetting positive and negative effects, and interactive catalysis, The three factors show synergistic correlation through shortcoming compensation, positive-negative offsetting, and interactive catalysis, with the combined coefficient surpassing the maximum individual coefficient. Policy recommendations include promoting organic integration and mutual empowerment of the three systems, implementing regionally differentiated development strategies to narrow spatial disparities, and strengthening the multi-source collaborative drive of government, market, and social factors to improve coupling coordination levels in a targeted manner.