Does agricultural insurance promote the new-quality productivity? Evidence from double machine learning

Agricultural new-quality productivity is central to high-quality agricultural transformation. As the sector's main risk-management instrument, agricultural insurance and its transmission mechanisms merit careful study. Drawing on a balanced panel of 284 prefecture-level and above cities in China for 2008–2023 and machine-learning methods, this paper estimates the effect of agricultural insurance on new-quality productivity and traces its channels. The results show that agricultural insurance significantly promotes new-quality productivity. The effect operates through three mechanisms: attracting agricultural firms and improving the production environment; optimizing labor allocation and raising factor efficiency; and fostering technological innovation that strengthens overall productive capacity. Heterogeneity checks show a stronger effect in the central and western regions, in major grain-producing and supply–demand-balanced areas, and in regions with moderate disaster exposure or low-to-moderate incidence of extreme weather. These findings provide theoretical and empirical grounds for leveraging agricultural insurance to promote high-quality agricultural development and boost new-quality productivity.