Air Pollution and Agricultural Economic Resilience in China: The Moderating Role of Environmental Regulation

Sustainable agricultural development in China in the face of growing environmental concerns relies critically on how well regulatory policies strengthen agricultural resilience. This study aims to systematically investigate the impact of air pollution on agricultural economic resilience and its mechanisms of action and to explicitly assess the moderating role of environmental regulation. This study develops a thorough index system that evaluates agricultural economic resilience in three areas: risk resistance and recovery, adaptive adjustment capacity, and restructuring innovation. Panel data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2023 is used to achieve this. The implications of air pollution and its diverse consequences on agricultural economic resilience are systematically assessed using a two-way fixed-effects and moderating-effects model. The following are the primary conclusions: First, air pollution has a significant negative impact on the economic resilience of agriculture. This conclusion holds after considering the endogeneity problem and a series of robustness tests, such as the exclusion of samples, random sampling, and quantile regression. Second, different dimensions of agricultural economic resilience, intensity levels, and economic growth phases influence how much air pollution reduces agricultural economic resilience. Notably, at various stages of economic growth, air pollution steadily weakens the economic resilience of agriculture. In particular, the impact is more pronounced in the post-financial-crisis phase of domestic demand expansion and the phase of financial clearing and high-quality development. According to a dimensional perspective, air pollution significantly reduces the farm sector’s capacity to endure and recover from dangers while also making adaptive modifications easier, and the impact on transformational innovation is not significant. In terms of intensity, in contrast to places with higher resilience, those with lower resilience are disproportionately more adversely affected by air pollution. Third, environmental control mitigates some of the detrimental effects of air pollution on agricultural economic resilience. Based on these results, this study calls for stricter air pollution control measures, strengthens environmental regulatory support for agricultural resilience, and demonstrates region-specific governance solutions to guarantee the stability and sustainability of the agricultural economic framework.