The integration of sports, tourism, and agriculture is a vital pathway for diversified, sustainable rural economic development and rural revitalization. To explore the multi-condition synergistic mechanisms behind the coordinated development efficiency of the three sectors within sustainable agricultural systems, this study adopts the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework. Combining necessary condition analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we use 2019–2023 conditional panel data and 2020–2024 outcome data across 20 Chinese provinces (100 province-year observations) with a one-year lag for empirical analysis. The results show that digital technology innovation ( d = 0.305, p = 0.005) and resource endowments ( d = 0.329, p = 0.040) act as significant necessary-but-insufficient bottleneck constraints, requiring minimum thresholds to achieve high coordination efficiency. Specifically, reaching 100% efficiency demands at least 81.8% for digital innovation and 77.2% for resource endowments. No single condition alone is sufficient to generate the outcome, as all necessity test consistency values are below 0.9. This study further identifies three equivalent pathways driving sustainable integration, with overall solution consistency of 0.813 and coverage of 0.570: (a) the resource endowment–driven path, which offsets weak policy and market conditions via superior natural and cultural resources (unique coverage = 0.101); (b) the technology–market synergy path, where digital innovation paired with market demand substitutes for a solid regional economic foundation (unique coverage = 0.021); and (c) the digital innovation–resource compensation path, where technological empowerment makes up for human capital scarcity (unique coverage = 0.058). Further analysis reveals distinct regional adaptability among these pathways: China’s eastern regions primarily rely on dual drivers of technology and market demand (62.5% follow the technology–market synergy path), while central and western regions of China depend more on resource endowments and emerging digital capabilities, with 80% of central provinces and 100% of western provinces following the resource endowment–driven path (Fisher’s exact p 0.001, Cramér’s V = 0.662). These findings validate the TOE framework’s applicability in cross-industry integration and offer differentiated policy insights to advance sustainable agricultural systems and rural economic resilience across China’s regions.
Chen et al. (2026) studied this question.