Can Certification of Geographical Indication Agricultural Products Promote Agricultural Green Total Factor Productivity? Evidence on Moderation and Threshold Effects from China

Agricultural modernization in China requires reconciling productivity growth with environmental sustainability, but it remains uncertain whether market-based quality institutions can also support this environmental agenda. This study examines whether and how Geographical Indication (GI) certification—a market-based quality institution primarily designed to protect product quality—affects Agricultural Green Total Factor Productivity (AGTFP), by assessing its direct effect, its interaction with agricultural industrial agglomeration, and the regional development conditions under which this effect materializes. Based on panel data from 31 Chinese provinces from 2012 to 2023, this study employs a two-way fixed-effects model to estimate the baseline effect, a moderating-effect model to examine the role of agricultural industrial agglomeration, and a panel threshold regression model to capture potential non-linearities. Results show that: (1) GI certification significantly increases AGTFP, raising it by approximately 0.001 units per certification at the 1% significance level, a result that remains robust to instrumental variable estimation; (2) agricultural industrial agglomeration positively moderates this relationship, with GI certification’s effect significant only in high-agglomeration regions; and (3) the effect of GI certification follows a threshold-dependent pattern, turning from a significant negative effect of 0.0023 below an agricultural development level of 0.048 to a significant positive effect of 0.0015 above it. This study offers the first systematic evidence on the green institutional efficacy of GI certification and its boundary conditions. Consequently, agricultural policy should shift its focus from simply issuing certifications to maintaining ongoing performance oversight, with strategies tailored to regional industrial agglomeration and levels of economic development.