Policy combinations and county-level agricultural economic resilience: a study based on the “dual-pilot” policy of China Specialized Agricultural Product Advantage Zones and Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Counties

In the face of escalating natural risks and compounded uncertainties, enhancing agricultural economic resilience has become an important approach for stabilizing the agricultural economic system and promoting high-quality agricultural development. From the perspective of policy combinations, this study treats the China Specialized Agricultural Product Advantage Zones pilot policy and the Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration policy as a quasi-natural experiment. Using county-level panel data from China covering the period from 2011 to 2023, this study employs a double machine learning (DML) model to examine the impact of the “dual-pilot” policy on county-level agricultural economic resilience and its underlying mechanisms. The results show that: 1) the “dual-pilot” policy significantly enhances county-level agricultural economic resilience, and compared with a single pilot policy, the policy combination generates a stronger promoting effect; 2) the “dual-pilot” policy mainly enhances county-level agricultural economic resilience through two channels, namely agricultural industrial structure upgrading and agricultural technological innovation; 3) the effects of the “dual-pilot” policy exhibit significant heterogeneity, with stronger promoting effects observed in counties with higher levels of agricultural development, better digital infrastructure, and more favorable financing environments. The findings provide empirical evidence for optimizing county-level agricultural policy combinations, enhancing agricultural economic resilience, and stabilizing agricultural development.