An empirical study of the impact of environmental regulation on the eco-efficiency of digital agriculture: a quasi-natural experiment based on China’s carbon emissions trading pilot policy

Carbon emissions trading systems have become increasingly prevalent amid rising global climate concerns and serve as key market-based tools for sustainable transformation. Agriculture is central to advancing China's "dual carbon" strategy, requiring both emission control and reduction, while rapid digital agricultural development enables more precise carbon monitoring and management. This study examines whether China's pilot carbon emissions trading pilot policy improves the eco-efficiency of digital agriculture. Using the dynamic data envelopment analysis (DEA)-Malmquist index method, we construct an evaluative framework to measure digital agricultural eco-efficiency, and based on panel data from 30 Chinese provinces over the period 2011-2022, we employ a difference-in-differences (DID) model to identify the policy effects. The empirical findings demonstrate that the ecological efficiency of China's digital agriculture has successfully increased because of the implementation of the pilot policy for carbon emissions trading, and this conclusion passes several robustness tests. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the effects of the policy vary across regions and different levels of development of digital agricultural eco-efficiency. According to the results of the mediating effect analysis, the pilot carbon emissions trading pilot policy increases forest coverage, which in turn increases digital agricultural eco-efficiency. The results of this research offer guidance for promoting environmentally sustainable agricultural development in China and for supporting international initiatives aimed at lowering agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.