Under dual-carbon goals, how effective are agricultural socialized services? Data from nearly 8000 farming households reveal a “threshold effect”

Agriculture accounts for about 25% of China’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Under the national strategic framework of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, the green transformation of agriculture has shifted from an “optional question” to a “required question”. However, smallholders face a triple dilemma of insufficient funds, high costs, and a lack of technical knowledge, making the promotion of green technologies difficult. Agricultural socialized services (ASS), which cover full-chain services such as machinery rental, hired labor, and technical consulting, are regarded as a key breakthrough. Nevertheless, a core issue still needs to be clarified: can ASS truly drive green production? What are their mechanisms and boundary conditions?

Although the academic community has paid attention to the potential of ASS, three major research gaps have hindered the formulation of precise policies. First, existing studies mostly remain at the level of theoretical deduction and lack rigorous empirical testing based on large-scale panel data. Second, the “black box” of the mechanism has not yet been opened—how resource endowments moderate the relationship, whether non-linear thresholds exist, and whether farmers in different regions and with different scales respond consistently have not been systematically answered. Third, accurate measurement of green total factor productivity at the household level has long been missing due to data and methodological limitations, causing research to often “see only the macro level while neglecting the micro level”. These dilemmas have led to “one-size-fits-all” policymaking, making it difficult to adapt measures to local conditions and individual circumstances, and the green benefits of ASS have not been fully released.

Against this background, the team led by Tingyi YANG at the School of Economics and Management, Xi’an University of Technology, recently published a research paper titled “Impact mechanisms and pathways of agricultural socialized services on agricultural green production in China under its dual-carbon goals” in ENGINEERING Agriculture (DOI: 10.15302/J-FASE-2026676). Using China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data from 2014 to 2022, covering 7794 agricultural households in 24 provinces, the study accurately measured household-level agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP) using the slack-based measure global Malmquist-Luenberger (SBM-GML) index, constructed a comprehensive index of rural household resource endowments with five dimensions and 21 indicators via the entropy weight method, and applied a panel fixed-effects model, moderation effect model, dynamic panel threshold model, and GMM estimation. The study achieved three major breakthroughs.

First, the discovery of the moderating effect is highly inspiring: rural household resource endowments (natural, economic, human, physical, and social capital) significantly and positively moderate the green effectiveness of ASS—households with richer resources are better able to use services to achieve green efficiency gains.

Second, the threshold effect reveals the “critical point logic” of services: when service provision is below the threshold, its impact on green productivity is actually negative; once the threshold is crossed, the effect immediately turns significantly positive. This means that the green effect of ASS has a clear “critical point”: service provision must cross this threshold before it can shift from “ineffective or even negative” to “significantly positive”.

Third, the identification of dual heterogeneity provides a scientific basis for precise policymaking: Northeast China, with its high mechanization rate (98.2%) and advantages in scale operation, shows the most prominent service effects; large-scale farms (≥ 0.4 ha) show significant green effects from services, while the effects for smallholders are not significant.

This study not only responds to the agricultural emission-reduction demands under the dual-carbon goals but also provides an actionable micro-level pathway for comprehensively advancing the rural revitalization strategy. First, the study confirms that ASS can bring smallholders onto the track of modern agriculture, but only if resource empowerment lowers the adoption threshold—offering precise optimization directions for the agricultural production trusteeship service projects promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Second, the proposed environmental–economic–livelihood three-dimensional assessment framework incorporates indicators such as carbon emissions per unit of output and the share of green agricultural output value into evaluation, moving agricultural carbon governance from a “slogan” to something “measurable and manageable”. Finally, the revealed scale heterogeneity reminds us that if policies benefit only large farms, smallholders may be further marginalized. The three-pillar policy framework—integrating endowment empowerment, differentiated strategies, and multi-criteria carbon governance—should be implemented to ensure that the benefits of green transformation reach smallholders and advance green agricultural production and rural development under the dual-carbon goals.