Agricultural new quality productivity empowering rural revitalization: Mechanisms and spatial spillover effects

Rural revitalization is often required for modern agriculture in China. Empowering rural revitalization with new, quality productive forces has been one of the most important national strategies in recent years. This study aims to explore the impact of agricultural new quality productive forces on rural revitalization. Provincial panel data was were collected from 2012 to 2022. 1) The Spatial Durbin model was used to determine the direct and spatial spillover effect of new quality productive forces on rural revitalization. 2) Mediating The mediating effect model was adopted to test the influence mechanism, and finally, the regional heterogeneity was explored after evaluation. The results showed that agricultural new quality productive forces were significantly promoted rural revitalization, particularly with the significant negative effect of spatial spillover on the rural revitalization; New quality productive forces were used to empower urban-rural integration and rural science and technology to promote rural revitalization. Urban-rural integration was also dominated, compared with rural science and technology; The highest levels of new quality productive forces were observed in the eastern regions. There was an inhibitory effect on the rural revitalization in the eastern and central regions, while there was no significant spillover effect of new quality productive forces in the western region. Some suggestions were proposed from the three perspectives. 1) A differentiated regulatory system was established with "coordinated development and balanced interests" patterns. 2) Industries, technology, and finance were integrated for decision decision-making. 3) A regional pattern of agricultural new quality productive forces was featured by leading east, supporting the central region, and western characteristics. Three prospects were also presented. 1) Municipal or county levels can be refined to explore the artificial intelligence in scenarios, such as agricultural remote sensing, intelligent decision-making, and precise operations, thus resolving the disconnection between quantitative statistics and qualitative penetration of artificial intelligence in the agricultural field. 2) It is also required to explore the interaction between urban-rural integration and rural science and technology finance under in the background of artificial intelligence. The regulatory role of the institutional environment can be determined to alleviate the dynamic imbalance between technological empowerment and institutional adaptation under agricultural the new quality productive forces. 3) A combination of case analysis and spatial econometric models can also be adopted to systematically examine the negative spatial spillover of agricultural new quality productive forces. It is very necessary to clarify the contradiction between the technological diffusion and the geographical spatial attenuation in the dynamic patterns of agricultural new quality productive forces. Theoretical references and empirical evidence can also provide tohelp promote the rural revitalization in China.