94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1570767
This article is part of the Research Topic Enhancing Food Security and Trade Resilience in Sustainable Agricultural Systems View all 17 articles
Can the Integration of Agriculture and Tourism Foster Agricultural Green Development? -An Empirical Analysis Based on Panel Data from 30 Provinces in China
Provisionally accepted- 1 College of Public Administration and Law, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, Hunan, China
- 2 Business College, Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology, Loudi, Hunan Province, China
- 3 History and Culture College, Linyi University, Linyi, Shandong Province, China
The integration of agriculture and tourism, grounded in agricultural resources, not only offers new development opportunities for the agricultural sector but also steers it towards a greener and more sustainable trajectory. Using panel data from 30 provinces in China spanning from 2011 to 2022, this study quantifies the levels of agriculture and tourism integration (ATL) and agricultural green development (AGD) in each province. Then, the study applies the fixed effects model, the Spatial Durbin Model, and the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model to empirically assess the impact of ATL on AGD, as well as its spatial spillover effect and its nonlinear characteristics. The findings are as follows: (1) Over the study period, both the level of green agricultural development and the integration of agriculture and tourism exhibited steady growth, with marked spatial agglomeration effects; (2) ATL positively influenced AGD, suggesting that the integration of agriculture and tourism contributes to the green development of agriculture; (3) The impact of ATL on AGD exhibited significant spatial spillover effects, meaning that integrated agricultural-tourism development in one region can enhance AGD in neighboring provinces; (4) The effect of ATL on AGD demonstrated nonlinear characteristics, with the influence of ATL on AGD intensifying as ATL increased. Based on these findings, the study proposes several policy recommendations, including strengthening top-level policy design, improving regional coordination mechanisms, and enhancing human capital cultivation, to foster deeper integration between agriculture and tourism and to further accelerate the green development of agriculture.
Keywords: integration of agriculture and tourism, Agricultural green development, Spatial spillover effect, Nonlinear effect, impact
Received: 04 Feb 2025; Accepted: 06 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Wang, Jiang and Xie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Weiguo Jiang, College of Public Administration and Law, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, Hunan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.