Digital technology adoption, agricultural production efficiency, and farmers’ livelihood resilience

Against the backdrop of rural digitalization and agricultural modernization, this paper examines how digital technology adoption affects agricultural production efficiency and farmers’ livelihood resilience. Drawing on information effect theory and the sustainable livelihoods framework, we construct an integrated analytical framework linking digital technology adoption, production efficiency, and livelihood resilience. Using CFPS panel data from 2014 to 2022, we empirically investigate the productivity effects of digital technology adoption, its underlying mechanisms, and the transmission effect of efficiency gains on livelihood resilience. The results show that digital technology adoption significantly improves agricultural production efficiency, and the findings remain robust across instrumental variable estimation, propensity score matching, and alternative specifications. Mechanism analysis indicates that the productivity effect operates primarily through technical efficiency improvement, factor allocation optimization, and service cost reduction. The effects are more pronounced among young and middle-aged farmers, grain producers, households in plain areas, and villages with better digital infrastructure. Further analysis demonstrates that production efficiency gains significantly enhance livelihood resilience by strengthening income stability, asset accumulation, and risk-coping capacity. This study provides micro-level evidence on the economic effects of agricultural digitalization and offers policy implications for advancing digital rural development and improving farmers’ adaptive resilience.