Research On Farmers’ Behavioral Response To Adoption Of Green Agricultural Technology In Xinjiang Province

Agriculture has always played an important role in China’s national economic development.The exploration of development models of modern agriculture,especially the development of green agriculture,has become the focus of attention.However,judging from the tremendous contribution made by modern agriculture to the industrialization and urbanization of the country in the past few decades,a considerable part of these achievements mainly relied on simple agricultural labor,excessive exploitation of limited resources,and excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides,which caused the low utilization rate of agricultural resources,the serious pollution of agricultural production environment,and the difficulty to guarantee quantity,quality and safety of agricultural products.To solve these problems,various regions in Xinjiang Province have begun to promote and to apply a series of environmentally friendly green agricultural technologies in agricultural production practices,which can not only improve soil quality and ecological environment,but also increase agricultural productivity and ensure the quality and safety of agricultural products and optimize a series of problems such as pesticide residues in agricultural products and excessive heavy metals.However,at present,many farmers are not motivated enough to adopt green agricultural technology.It is of great significance to the realization of green agricultural development that how to break through the existing restrictions and to improve farmers’ adoptive behavior of green agricultural technology.In this way,farmers can recognize,accept and make corresponding changes in agricultural green development,and practically apply green agricultural technology to agricultural production practices.In view of this,this paper takes green agricultural technology as the research object.On the basis of analyzing the behavioral response of farmers’ adoption of green agricultural technology,the current research constructs the analysis framework of "behavioral motivation-behavioral decision-behavioral response" and gradually carries out research.First,an exploration of important factors,which affect farmers’ behavioral motivation to adopt green agricultural technology,the farmers’ decision in adopting green agricultural technology,and farmers’ behavioral changes in response to the development of green agriculture,provides a theoretical basis for subsequent variable selection.Secondly,using the empirical survey data of 779 farmers in Xinjiang Province and based on the review of the influencing factors affecting the decision-making of green agricultural technology adoption behavior,the paper determines the final explanatory variables by integrating farmers’ own endowment characteristics,farmers’ perception of the ease of use,perception of usefulness with perception of friendliness of technology adoption behavior.Moreover,the paper uses technology acceptance theory and empirical analysis methods to analyze and discuss behavior decisions and influencing factors of farmers adopting green agricultural technology.Finally,through the establishment of a structural equation model based on the Deconstructed Theory of Planned Behavior(DTPB),the current paper analyzes response mechanism theory of farmers’ adoption of green agricultural technology and conducts the multi-group SEM analysis of farmers’ capital endowment as the adjustment variable with the aim to optimize the level of government supervision and to provide a theoretical basis for improving the responsiveness of farmers’ green agricultural behavior.The main research conclusions are summarized as follows:(1)By analyzing the different types of green agricultural technology adopted by farmers in Xinjiang Province,it can be seen that among all the technologies,the three types of green agricultural technology,that is,water-saving irrigation technology,straw return technology and protective farming technology,have the highest frequency of adoption;followed by pest-resistance technology,mechanical drug-saving technology and green pest control technology;the last is the soil testing formula fertilization technology and slow and controlled release of fertilizer technology.(2)Through the analysis of factors influencing farmers’ decision-making on green agricultural technology adoption,capital endowment,perception of the ease of use,perception of usefulness,and perception of friendliness all significantly affect farmers’ behavioral decision on adopting green agriculture technology.As for the farmers’ capital endowment,the variables of age,gender,education level,householdannual income and planting scale all have significantly positive effect on farmers’ decision-making of adopting green agriculture technology to different degrees,while the presence or absence of part-time variables has significantly negative effects on farmers’ adoption behavior of green agriculture technology.Among the factors of perception of ease of use,perception of usefulness and perception of friendliness,the perception of ease of technology use,the perception of access of technology,the perception of economic benefits and the perception of technological risks have significantly positive impact on farmers’ green technology adoption behavior,and farmers’ perception of cost has a significantly negative impact on their green technology adoption behavior.(3)By constructing farmers’ green agriculture technology adoption behavior model,and analyzing farmers’ response behavior of adopting green agricultural technology,it is found that in the overall path effect analysis,the perception of ease of use,the perception of usefulness,the perception of friendliness,the adoption attitude,the peer influence,the influence of others,subjective norms,self-efficacy,convenience,perception of behavioral control,and behavior-making all have significantly positive effects on behavioral response.According to the standardized path coefficients of structural equations,the effect on perception of ease of use on adoption attitude of technology is higher than that of perception of usefulness;external factors have more influence on farmers’ adoption of green agriculture technology than peers’ influence;self-efficacy and convenience conditions have significantly positive impact on farmers’ adoption of green agriculture technology.(4)Through a comparative analysis of the path effect and behavior response of farmers adopting green agricultural technology,it is found that adoption attitudes and subjective norms have significantly positive effect on farmers’ behavior decision and behavior response on adopting green agricultural technology and the effect on decision making is higher than behavioral response.However,the perception of behavioral control significantly positive effect on behavioral decision-making and behavioral response of adopting green agricultural technology,and the effect on the behavioral decision is lower than the behavioral response.(5)Through the use of control variables such as northern and southern Xinjiang,land scale,education level,age,gender and income level to conduct groupcomparison analysis of the driving path of farmers’ response to green agricultural technology adoption,it is found that in the overall path comparison,there is no significant difference between the regions of northern and southern Xinjiang as for the farmers’ response of adopting green agricultural technology.There are also significant differences in educational level and gender difference in the path comparison of subjective norms and peer influence to behavior response.Group with lower education level has more significant influence than group with higher education level,and the female has more significant influence than the male.Significant differences between age and gender are also found in the behavioral response path comparison of perception of behavioral control and perception of friendliness.Among them,in the comparison of path of perception of behavioral control to behavioral response,the younger group has more significant effect than the older group.In the comparison of the path of perception of friendliness to behavior response,the older group has more significant influence than the younger group and the male group has more significant influence than the female group.There are significant differences of income levels in the path comparison of perception of behavioral control,perception of friendliness and convenience conditions to behavioral responses.Among them,in the comparison of the path of perception of behavioral control and convenience to behavioral response,the group with lower income has more significant effect than the group with higher income.However,in the comparison of the path of perception of friendliness to behavioral response,the group with higher income has more significant impact than the group of lower income.In addition,under the differences of three planting scale that is large,medium and small,there are significant differences in the path comparison of perception of behavioral control,perception of usefulness,perception of friendliness,self-efficacy and convenience conditions to behavioral responses.Among them,in the path comparison of perception of behavioral control,perception of usefulness,and convenience conditions on behavior response,groups of small-scale planting have more significant impact than groups of medium-scale and large-scale planting.Large-scale planting groups have more significant impact than medium-and small-scale planting groups.The innovation of this paper is summarized as follows:Domestic research on the adoption of green agricultural technology is on the rise,and research on behavior response and driving path of farmers’ adoption of green agricultural technology is even more rare.At present,experts and scholars in field of agricultural economic mostly apply Technology Acceptance Model(TAM)to study a single technology.The adoption of green agricultural technology groups in a certain area has not been discussed horizontally from the adoption of green agricultural technology groups.And there are certain limitations in the technology acceptance model(TAM)that does not fully consider the constraints and impacts of external environmental factors on farmers’ adoption of green agricultural technology.Deconstructed theory of planned behavior(DTPB)can make up for this limitation,and the theory has been proved to have strong applicability and explanatory power in the field of consumer behavior research.Therefore,it is a meaningful exploration and attempt to apply the deconstructive theory of planned behavior to farmers’ response behavior of adoption of green agricultural technology.In view of this,based on the characteristics and adoption of green agricultural technology,this paper uses the DTPB model to modify and build a response model for farmers’ adoption of green agricultural technology.The model incorporates reasonable variables such as perception of friendliness,peer influence,external influence,adoption attitude,behavior decision and behavior response,to enhance the explanatory power of farmers’ adoption of green agricultural technology.Through empirical research,it is also confirmed that the revised model has excellent explanatory power for farmers’ adoption of green agricultural technology.In addition,in order to further explore the applicability of the behavioral response model of farmers ’adoption of green agricultural technology among different samples,this paper selects capital endowment as the adjustment variable and conducts multi-group comparative analysis on the overall path of behavior response of farmers’ adoption of green agricultural technology.The research also confirms that there are significant differences among different groups,which also provides a certain reference value for subsequent in-depth research or comparative analysis of the adoption behavior of green agricultural technology by farmers of different groups.