ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics

Temporal Aggregation and the Identification and Stability of High-Quality Development Configurations in Agricultural Enterprises

• Yinghui WU ^1,2

• PX Peihong Xie ³

• JN Jie Ni ²

• YY Yuxue Yang ⁴

• 1. School of International Trade and Economics, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Shanghai, China

• 2. Nanjing Open University, Nanjing, China

• 3. School of Business Administration, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Shanghai, China

• 4. School of Economics and Management, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China

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Abstract

Using 306 firm-year observations from 26 Chinese listed agricultural enterprises during 2010-2022, this study constructs a 15-indicator high-quality development index (HD) through principal component analysis (PCA) and compares firm-mean static and annual panel fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Multi-year means summarize long-term levels, whereas annual records preserve combinations within the same year. The baseline identifies four static and six annual paths, including one shared configuration of high environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance, non-strong financing constraints, state ownership, and non-pollution-intensive industry status. Opposite ESG and financing-constraint (SA) states suggest complementarity at the configurational level. Annual D2, comprising non-high ESG, high SA, non-state ownership, and pollution-intensive industry status, is retained exactly under equal and entropy weighting and a separate PCA check raising the proportional reduction in inconsistency (PRI) cutoff to 0.65. Its identification is robust across these settings; outcome-direction checks and case evidence further support its correspondence with high HD. Under baseline rules, the annual solution has higher consistency on common annual data, while the static solution has slightly broader coverage. Relative performance changes with screening rules, and the complete baseline shared configuration is measurement-sensitive. The findings reveal configuration differences under temporal aggregation and inform enterprise assessment combining long-term types with annual states.

Summary

Keywords

Agricultural enterprises, annual panel, economic sustainability, Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, High-quality development, temporal aggregation

Received

03 October 2026

Accepted

27 October 2026

Copyright

© 2026 WU, Xie, Ni and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Peihong Xie

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