Digital Inclusive Finance and Agricultural New-Quality Productive Forces: Dynamic Effects, Industrial-Chain Coordination, and Data-Element Thresholds

This study examines how digital inclusive finance promotes agricultural new-quality productive forces through agricultural industrial-chain coordination, data-element conditions, dynamic accumulation, and spatial spillovers. Based on a balanced panel of 30 Chinese provinces from 2013 to 2023, we estimate two-way fixed-effects, system GMM, mediation, panel-threshold, and spatial Durbin models. The results demonstrate that digital inclusive finance significantly increases agricultural new-quality productive forces. This finding remains robust to lagged specifications, system-GMM estimation, Oster bounds, and an independent agricultural green total factor productivity outcome. Agricultural industrial-chain coordination is positively associated with the outcome and is consistent with a partial transmission channel. Data-element agglomeration generates a double-threshold pattern, with the marginal contribution of digital inclusive finance increasing after the estimated thresholds have been crossed. The spatial estimates indicate positive associations with neighboring provinces under some weight matrices, with stronger associations in eastern China and in regions with greater industrial-chain coordination. By integrating organizational coordination, data factors, temporal dynamics, and spatial dependence, this study provides a unified account of digital financial empowerment in agriculture. The findings indicate the need to develop digital financial inclusion alongside agricultural data infrastructure and cross-stage industrial-chain coordination, which would support sustainable, regionally balanced agricultural modernization.