Regional Digital–Intelligent Transformation and Sustainable Quantity–Quality Balance in Tea Production: Evidence from China

Tea is a high-value agricultural sector whose sustainable development is closely tied to the livelihoods of numerous smallholders. Persistent rural labor outmigration has made it increasingly difficult for smallholder-dominated tea production to sustain a balance between quantity expansion and quality improvement. While experimental studies show that digital–intelligent technologies can improve tea yield and quality, whether their real-world diffusion contributes to a sustainable quantity–quality balance remains underexplored. This study proposes the quantity–quality equilibrium level of tea production (QQEL_TP) to measure this balance and constructs a regional digital–intelligent transformation (RDIT) index to capture the penetration of digital–intelligent technologies into local industries. Using panel data from China’s major tea-producing provinces from 2012 to 2023, this study applies a two-way fixed-effects model to examine the RDIT–QQEL_TP relationship. Results show that RDIT significantly improves QQEL_TP. Further analysis suggests that e-commerce development is a potential channel, while heterogeneity analysis indicates that the positive effect is more likely to materialize in provinces with a stronger digital–intelligent foundation, an existing Taobao village foundation, and a smaller tea industry scale. This study provides industry-level evidence on the role of digital–intelligent transformation in promoting agricultural sustainability, and offers policy implications for addressing production-side quantity–quality imbalances in other smallholder-dominated industries.