The impact of digital rural construction on grain production resilience

Abstract

Ensuring resilient grain production is essential for food availability, price stability, and nutrition security under growing climatic, market, and geopolitical uncertainty. However, limited evidence explains how digital rural construction strengthens resilience specifically at the grain-production stage. Using panel data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2012 to 2023, this study constructs composite indices of digital rural construction and grain production resilience and applies a two-way fixed effects model, a mediation model, and a panel threshold model to examine its direct effect, transmission mechanism, and fiscal boundary condition. The results show that digital rural construction significantly improves grain production resilience, and this conclusion remains robust after sample adjustments, alternative variable measurement, and endogeneity tests. Heterogeneity analysis indicates stronger effects in western China, major grain-producing areas, and production-consumption balanced areas. Mechanism analysis shows that new quality agricultural productive forces partially mediate this relationship by upgrading agricultural labor, production tools, and factor allocation. The threshold results reveal two fiscal-support thresholds, 0.0699 and 0.1236: the effect of digital rural construction is strongest below the first threshold, weakens between the two thresholds, and becomes statistically insignificant above the second threshold. These findings provide policy evidence for strengthening food and nutrition security through digital rural development and more efficient fiscal support.