The impact of digital transformation on the quality and safety level of agricultural exports: evidence from Chinese listed companies

Enhancing the quality and safety of exported agricultural products and improving export competitiveness is the key to establishing enhanced competitive advantages in agricultural products, developing a trade powerhouse and realising high-quality development of agriculture. This paper uses the data of Chinese listed companies and Chinese Customs from 2007 to 2016 to discuss the effect and mechanism of digital transformation of enterprises on the quality and safety level of export agricultural products by using the staggered differential method. The study shows that (1) Enterprise digital transformation effectively improves the quality and safety of exported agricultural products, and this result holds after endogeneity, placebo and multiple robustness tests; (2) Heterogeneity analyses reveal that the quality and safety effect of enterprise digital transformation is greater for exporting to developed countries’ markets, non-state-owned enterprises and enterprises in the eastern region, in addition to bulk agricultural products and consumer-oriented agricultural products; (3) Mechanism analyses shows that enterprise digital transformation raises the quality and safety of exported agricultural products through technological innovation, product tracing, information sharing and quality assurance effects.