In China, characterized by its vast population and limited land, expanding the scale of agricultural operations through the transfer of land management rights is a crucial pathway to achieving agricultural modernization. Using data from the China Land Economic Survey (CLES), we empirically explored the influence of digital technology use on land transfer-in by farmers. Employing the Probit model and the KHB method, this study examined the mechanisms underlying this relationship and addressed the issue of endogeneity through the Conditional Mixed Process (CMP) model, grounded in the instrumental variable method. Key findings include: (1) both the accessibility and the depth of digital technology use significantly facilitated land transfer-in by farmers. For every one-unit increase in digital technology accessibility, the likelihood of land transfer-in escalated by 6.2%; similarly, a one-unit rise in the depth of digital technology use increased this probability by 2.6%. (2) An analysis of the mechanisms indicates that social networks and credit availability played partial mediating roles in the impact of digital technology accessibility and depth on land transfer-in, with social networks exhibiting a stronger mediation effect. (3) Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the impact of digital technology use on land transfer-in was more pronounced in peri-urban villages and among farmers with higher literacy levels. In light of these findings, we proposed policy recommendations to accelerate the development of rural digital infrastructure, enhance digital skill training for farm households, and vigorously promote rural digital inclusive finance.

Counties are the basic unit for addressing unbalanced development in a region, revitalizing rural areas, and promoting the integrated development of urban and rural areas. Despite the importance of county-level research, few studies have been conducted research at such a small scale. To address this gap in knowledge, this study constructs an evaluation system to measure the county sustainable development capacity (CSDC) of counties in China, identify constraints to development, and provide policy suggestions to promote the counties’ long-term stable development. Specifically, the CSDC indicator system was based on the regional theory of sustainable development and included economic aggregation capacity, social development capacity, and environmental carrying capacity. This framework was applied to 103 key counties to receive assistance in pursuing rural revitalization in 10 provinces in western China. The AHP–Entropy Weighting Method and TOPSIS model were employed to inform the scores of CSDC and its secondary indicators, and ArcGIS 10.8 was used to portray the spatial distribution of CSDC and to classify these key counties into categories that guided specific policy recommendations. The results demonstrate a high degree of unbalanced and inadequate development in these counties and that rural revitalization efforts can be targeted to increase the speed of development. It is crucial to follow the recommendations that conclude this paper to promote sustainable development in areas that have been lifted out of poverty and to revive rural areas.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure serves as a vital bridge for forestry firms to communicate with their stakeholders and obtain legitimacy support. Existing studies focus on forestry firms’ CSR disclosures based on CSR reports but lack consideration of such disclosures on social media. In this study, based on WeChat, the most widely used social media platform in China, we obtained 3311 tweets from 36 WeChat Official Accounts (WOA) of 63 Chinese-listed forestry firms in 2018 and used content analysis to classify the CSR information involved in these tweets based on the stakeholder dimensions. The main analysis results show that the top three CSR dimensions disclosed by Chinese forestry firms in social media are the shareholder (28.21%), customer (26.20%), and employee (23.64%) dimensions, and there are also great differences in the subcontent of disclosure concerns in each stakeholder dimension, e.g., approximately 86% of CSR disclosures for customers are product and service information. Additionally, we conducted a content analysis on the CSR reports of forestry firms using WOA. The results show that firms express different concerns in CSR reports than on social media, and the most mentioned dimensions in their reports are the environment (23.69%), employees (20.91%), and shareholders (20.21%). This indicates that there is a significant difference between the stakeholders that Chinese forestry firms focus on in social media and those that they focus on in CSR reports. This paper is the first study to focus on the CSR disclosure of Chinese forestry firms in social media and provides a reference for scholars to understand the information activities of forestry firms in social media.

I. Embedded within the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development lies an explicit mandate for nations to harmonize economic growth with environmental stewardship. Goal 12 exhorts count...