[Spatial Effects and Influencing Mechanisms of Agricultural Carbon Emission Reduction Enabled by Digital Rural...

The development of digital rural areas has important theoretical and practical implications for promoting agricultural carbon emission reduction in China. Based on the panel data of 29 provinces， cities， and autonomous regions in China （with data for Hong Kong， Macau， Taiwan， Tibet， and Hainan temporarily unavailable） from 2011 to 2021， the spatial spillover effect of digital rural development on agricultural carbon emission reduction was tested using the Spatial Durbin Model. The study produced several interesting results： ① The process of digital rural development and the changes in agricultural carbon emissions are highly correlated in space. ② Digital rural development has significant spatial spillover characteristics in suppressing agricultural carbon emissions. The development of digital rural areas not only effectively suppresses carbon emissions in the region but also has a positive inhibitory effect on the carbon emissions of nearby regions. ③ Digital rural development can lower the level of agricultural carbon emissions through the pathway of promoting green technology innovation. ④ The heterogeneity test results show that the inhibitory effect of digital rural development on agricultural carbon emissions in the central region is more significant than the effect in the eastern and western regions. ⑤ The spatial spillover effect of digital rural development first increases and then decreases as the geographic distance increases and reaches its maximum value at a distance of 500 km.