Effects and its spatial characteristics of socialized agriculture services on agricultural carbon emissions

Agricultural carbon emissions represent a significant challenge for China in its pursuit of the “dual carbon” goals. These goals are essential for transitioning to high-quality development in China. Within this context, socialized agricultural services have emerged as a pivotal element, bridging the gap between small farmers and modern agricultural practices and significantly inhibiting the increase in agricultural carbon emissions. Based on an analysis of theories about socialized agricultural services, agricultural carbon emissions, and provincial panel data from 2007 to 2021, this study comprehensively uses the factor measurement algorithm, spreading grade method, two-way fixed effects model, mediation effects model, and spatial econometrics (especially the spatial Durbin model). These methods were employed to measure the amount of agricultural carbon emissions and the estimated extent of socialized agricultural services in each province was considered. Additionally, this study examines the impact of socialized agricultural services on agricultural carbon emissions, the specific pathways through which this impact occurs, the spatial effects and characteristics of the main effect, and the spatial range over which these spatial effects are observed. The results show that: 1) Overall, agricultural carbon emissions in most provinces show a trend of first increasing and then decreasing during the research period, while the levels of socialized agricultural services of each province are increasing during the same time; socialized agriculture services play a significant role in inhibiting agricultural carbon emissions; the estimations of the inhibitions exhibit differences for the representative provinces in different locations from all the provinces selected in the study; the representative provinces from eastern provinces show a reinforced effect, while the western provinces show an effect that seems weaker. 2) In the process of inhibiting agricultural carbon emissions through various pathways of socialized agricultural services, the mediation roles of rural land transfer and the reduction of operation scale of agriculture are significant as they can play partial mediation effects overall. Specifically, the mediation effects of rural land transfer accounted for 13% of the total effect, while the reduction in small farmers contributed to 18% of the total effect. 3) From the estimation of spatial effects, the role of socialized agricultural services shows spillover effects to adjacent areas. Socialized agricultural services from other areas can significantly inhibit local agricultural carbon emissions. The spatial spillover effect increases with the increase of economic distance. Furthermore, 73.8% and 26.2% of the total spill over effect of socialized agricultural services on agricultural carbon emissions was measured under an economic distance of 2.0 d and beyond 2.0 d, respectively. Therefore, the government should build systems tailored to the local conditions of socialized agricultural services. Governments should aim to moderately increase the transfer rate of rural land, weaken the scale of small farmers, improve the full process services of rural land custody, give full play to regional industrial advantages, encourage cross-regional socialized agriculture services, strengthen the integration cooperation of regional economies, and promote efficient cross-regional allocation of resources.