Sustainability Transitions in Agriculture under Green and Low-Carbon Development: Institutional Evidence from China and Bihar,India

Abstract

Sustainable agricultural transformation is widely recognised as a critical pathway for
achieving food security, environmental protection, and climate resilience in emerging
economies; however, existing literature often treats policy reform, financial mechanisms, and
technological innovation as isolated drivers, thereby underestimating the systemic and
institutional nature of sustainability transitions. This study develops and empirically applies
an integrated policy–finance–technology (PFT) nexus framework to conceptualise sustainable
agriculture as an outcome of dynamic interactions among policy innovation, green finance,
and technological transformation, mediated by institutional quality. Using a comparative
mixed-methods research design, the study examines two contrasting institutional
contexts—China and Bihar (India)—over the period 2005–2022, combining panel
econometric modelling based on composite indices of policy innovation, green finance
intensity, technology adoption, and sustainability outcomes with qualitative policy coding of
regulatory and strategic documents. Structural mediation and moderation analyses are
employed to identify transmission mechanisms and institutional conditioning effects. The
results provide robust empirical evidence that policy innovation exerts a significant positive
effect on sustainable agricultural outcomes, with green finance partially mediating this
relationship and technological adoption functioning as the proximate operational channel.
Institutional quality significantly moderates the effectiveness of policy and financial
instruments, indicating that governance capacity amplifies sustainability returns, while
feedback effects reveal that technological and environmental performance shapes subsequent
policy realignment, highlighting the adaptive and path-dependent nature of sustainability
transitions. Comparative findings further demonstrate that China’s coordinated institutional
architecture—characterised by strong regulatory integration, deep green finance systems, and
large-scale technological diffusion—generates substantially higher sustainability outcomes
than Bihar’s fragmented and resource-constrained governance framework. The study
contributes to sustainability and development literature by reframing sustainable agriculture

as an institutional coordination problem rather than a purely technological or financial
challenge and offers a generalisable analytical framework and policy-relevant insights for
designing integrated, adaptive, and institutionally grounded sustainability strategies in
emerging economies.