Effects Of Government Agencies’ And Farmers’ Social Networks On Soil Erosion Management

Soil erosion not only threatens agricultural food security,but also affects the quality of the regional ecological environment.Government agencies are the managers,farmers are executors in soil erosion management.Their willingness and ability determine the effects of soil erosion management directly.And the social network is an important factor which closely related to government agencies’ and farmers’ willingness,ability to participate in soil erosion management.This paper studies the impact of government agencies’ and farmers’ social networks on soil erosion management,and discussing the feasibility to improve the effect of soil erosion management by optimizing social networks.It can guide the scientific implementation of soil erosion management projects.This study has taken government agencies’ and farmers’ social networks as the research object.A social network analysis method was used to analyze the social networks’ structure and characteristic,identify the key nodes in the social networks.And discussing the impact of different structure and characteristic on soil erosion management,and the function,role of key nodes in the social networks.The relationship between social networks and soil erosion management effect calculated by multiple regression model.The main findings were as follows:The analysis of farmers’ social networks showed that:(1)In the traditional-type of social network,there was less exchange among farmers,and the ability of key farmers to transmit information was weak.Dealers were the most important way for traditional-type of farmers to obtain information from outside,but dealers did not have the motivation to provide soil erosion management technology to farmers.The absence of government agencies in the traditional-type of social network,resulting out the weak awareness of traditional-type of farmers on soil erosion management.So it was difficult to promote the governance technology in the traditional-type of social network.(2)In the new-type of social network,the exchange between nodes were active,and the information dissemination efficiency was high.Dealers and government agencies were important ways for farmers to obtain soil erosion management technologies.The key farmers had strong information dissemination ability.And they can quickly transfer the knowledge and technology to other farmers which they acquired from the outside.So the promotion of new technologies in the new-type of social network was easy.The analysis of government agencies’ social networks showed that:(1)In the process of soil erosion management,there was less cooperation and exchange among government agencies,which was not conducive to the information spread and resources effective allocation.And an obvious tendency existed in exchange and cooperation among the government agencies.These factors restricted the improvement of the soil erosion management effect.(2)There was a difference of influence on soil erosion management among different government agencies.The centrality of municipal government agencies was significantly higher than county-level agencies,so they had a stronger influence in the social network.The Government,Soil Conservation Service were the core agencies in the social network of soil erosion management.They had an important influence on efficiency of information dissemination and resource allocation in the network.The Fruit Bureau was key node in the exchange network of soil erosion management and the new-type of social network,it was an important agency to promote the information exchange between government agencies and farmers.