How does agricultural insurance affect agricultural economic resilience? Evidence from 167 prefecture-level cities in major grain-producing regions

Agricultural insurance serves as a critical arrangement for addressing extreme weather shocks and improving the agricultural risk management system. It is key to stabilizing agricultural production expectations and enhancing agricultural economic resilience. However, existing research remains insufficient regarding how agricultural insurance affects agricultural economic resilience, its underlying mechanisms, and regional heterogeneous effects. Using panel data from 167 prefecture-level cities in China’s major grain-producing regions from 2018 to 2023, this study employs a two-way fixed effects model to systematically examine the impact of agricultural insurance on agricultural economic resilience and its transmission mechanisms. The findings reveal that agricultural insurance significantly enhances agricultural economic resilience, a conclusion that holds robust after rigorous robustness tests and endogeneity treatment. Mechanism tests indicate that agricultural insurance strengthens agricultural economic resilience primarily through two channels: financing and credit enhancement and technological efficiency improvement. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the resilience-enhancing effect of agricultural insurance is more pronounced in the eastern and central regions, as well as in areas with larger urban–rural income disparities. Further analysis identifies a nonlinear relationship between agricultural insurance and agricultural economic resilience: when the development level of agricultural insurance (logarithm) exceeds 4.511, its positive effect on resilience becomes significantly stronger.