Objective/Meaning The existing studies ignored the important emission sources such as soil management, lime application and farmland biomass burning when measuring the agricultural carbon emissions, and there was a lack of urban-scale agricultural carbon emissions measurement and discussion of the impact of digital economy on it. This paper aimed to analyze the impact of digital economy on the urban agricultural carbon emissions, so as to make up for the shortcomings of existing research, and improve the urban-scale measurement framework of agricultural carbon emissions, thus to provide policy implications for promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of agriculture.

Methods/Procedures Based on the data of 280 Chinese cities from 2011 to 2021, the impact of digital economy on the urban agricultural carbon emissions was analyzed, and the moderating effects of urban ecological resilience and new-type urbanization were examined.

Results/Conclusions The research found that: (1) The conclusion that the digital economy could reduce the agricultural carbon emissions was still valid after a series of robustness tests. (2) The heterogeneity analysis revealed that the digital economy had significant inhibitory effect on the agricultural carbon emissions in the production-consumption balance zones, major grain-producing regions, major grain-consuming regions, planting areas and aquaculture zones, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Chengdu-Chongqing region, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Yellow River Basin, the cities east of the Hu Huanyong Line, as well as the eastern and western Chinese cities. (3) The moderating mechanism suggested that the urban ecological resilience and new-type urbanization strengthened the inhibitory effect of digital economy on the agricultural carbon emissions.