Digital Technology Adoption and Economic Decision-Making in Urban Agriculture Enterprises: A Systematic Review

urban agriculture enterprises; technological innovation; economic sustainability; systematic literature review; smart agriculture; digital agriculture; controlled-environment agriculture.

Urban agriculture enterprises (UAEs) have been increasingly encouraged as a commercial response to urbanization, the scarcity of peri-urban land and the growing demand for fresh, high value produce. The sustainability of UAEs' economy is always a worry. The literature has been very positive about the potential of technological innovation, controlled-environment agriculture, hydroponics, and the use of IoT and digital platforms for monitoring and controlling operations to address the structural cost and land limitations of urban enterprises, but there is a lack of comprehensive synthesis of the relationship between technology adoption and enterprise-level economic sustainability. This review fills this gap by providing a structured thematic literature review based on the principles of PRISMA 2020. Nine core academic sources were identified using a transparent keyword-based search and screening process and analyzed using deductive thematic coding. Based on the literature reviewed to date, the methodology has been disjointed: the general reviews of urban agriculture have not focused on the economic sustainability of urban agriculture; the economic reviews have been limited to OECD countries; and the technology reviews or agri-SME reviews have not distinguished urban commercial enterprises as a separate population. We combine four technology domains on three mediating economic mechanisms, and conclude that capital cost and digital literacy are the most significant barriers to adoption, and that there is a clear evidence gap on developing-economy contexts, particularly the exotic fruit and vegetable urban enterprise sub-sector in India. A conceptual framework and future research agenda are presented.