The Influence Mechanism Of Technology Training On Farmers’ Fertilizer-Reducing Behavior

Although fertilizer has a significant effect on the improvement of agricultural production efficiency,the excessive use of it has caused serious agricultural non-point source pollution.The key line of agricultural pollution control is cultivating farmers’ fertilizer-reducing behavior As a main source of specific human capital investment for farmers,agriculture technology training is an important policy tool for changing farmers’ fertilization habits and controlling agricultural non-point source pollution,which has an unignorable impact on farmers’ production behavior.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance for cultivating farmers’ green fertilization habits,promoting sustainable agricultural development to study the influence path and mechanism of technology training on farmers’ fertilizer-reducing behavior,as well as to discuss the role played by the extension of green fertilizers and efficient fertilization technologies in this process.Regarding green fertilizers and efficient fertilization technologies as biased technical progresses,this paper uses the Leontief production function and the expected utility function to model and analyze the farmers’ fertilization behavior.Moreover,itclarifies the theoretical mechanism of the influence on fertilizer-reducing behavior of technology training,and conducts an empirical test based on the micro survey data of 727 farmers in Guangdong Province.Firstly,it estimates the direct and indirect effect of technology training on farmers’ fertilizer-reducing behavior by using causal mediation analysis model,as well as performs a robustness test using propensity score matching.Secondly,it studies the temporal dynamics of all influence paths by using nonlinear regression model and quantile regression.Finally,under different conditions,it explores the heterogeneity of the influence mechanism of technology training by adding dummy variables and performing sub sample regression.The conclusions of this paper is as follow: First of all,technology training reduces fertilizer application indirectly through the extension of green fertilizers and efficient fertilization technologies,,which accounts for about 42.2% of the total effect.It also reduces directly uder the premise of the same type of fertilizer and fertilization technology.Secondly,the increase number of years that farmers receive technology training has a nonlinear effect on their fertilizer-reducing behavior.The indirect path is more obvious in the early stages of training,however,the direct path is more obvious after a few years.At the same time,there is a spatial spillover effect which is lagging of technology training on farmers in the same village.Thirdly,the degree of training has positive effects on the impact of training on fertilizer-reducing in all paths,though the frequency of training and the interaction between farmers and technicians only promotes the extension of efficient fertilization technologies.Technology training has a greater impact on fertilizer reduction for highly educated farmers,and farmers who have worked in agriculture for a short period of time and had non-agricultural work experience are more likely to reduce the amount of fertilizer through the application of green fertilizers and efficient fertilization technologies.