The agricultural sector faces a food crisis and major challenges in green and sustainable development, and digital technology is an important countermeasure. In this paper, “digital technology” is used as a keyword to construct a regional digitalization level indicator. China's provincial panel data from 2013 to 2020 are adopted as samples to explore the impact of regional digitalization levels on agricultural total factor productivity and its mechanism. The study found the following: (1) Regional digitalization can significantly raise agricultural total factor productivity. (2) Regional digitalization can significantly raise agricultural total factor productivity in economically underdeveloped areas but not in economically developed areas. (3) The mitigation of factor market distortion and large-scale production can strengthen the role of regional digitalization in raising agricultural total factor productivity.

This paper examines the impact of digital economy on corporate energy conservation and emission reduction (CECER) using China’s A-share listed heavily polluting enterprises from 2012 to 2019 as a sample. Our results show that: (1) Digital economy can significantly increase CECER, and this effect is significant for mining and manufacturing enterprises, and less significant for power, heat production and supply enterprises; (2) Mechanism research shows that digital economy promotes CECER through enhancing the green technology innovation capability, easing the financing constraints, and boosting market competition; (3) Heterogeneity research indicates that the promotion of digital economy to CECER is more significant in economically developed regions and regions with less financial pressure from local governments. This paper clarifies the factors influencing CECER and provides empirical evidence for achieving digital economy development and government goals for CECER.

Fulfilling social responsibilities in order to sustain development has increasingly become a strategic choice for companies. Good corporate governance can guarantee high corporate social responsibility performance. This paper selects state-owned enterprises listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-Share market from 2013 to 2019 as samples and uses a panel data OLS regression model to empirically test the impact of the governance of non-state shareholders on the social responsibility performance of state-owned enterprises from two aspects of shareholding: structure and high-level governance. The results show that, first, the governance of non-state shareholders helps to improve the social responsibility performance of state-owned enterprises; second, that mechanism analysis indicates that non-state shareholders improve the social responsibility performance of state-owned enterprises by improving the internal control quality; and third, the impact of the governance of non-state shareholders on the social responsibility performance of state-owned enterprises is heterogeneous in three aspects: the degree of marketization, the level of product market competition, and the corporate profitability. This paper not only helps to clarify the factors which influence the social responsibility performance of state-owned enterprises, but also enriches studies on the economic consequences brought by non-state shareholders through participating in the governance of state-owned enterprises.