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In recent years, entrepreneurship has been gaining more prominence as a potential tool for solving poverty in developing countries. This paper mainly examines the relationship between farmer entrepreneurship and rural poverty alleviation in China by assessing the contribution of farm entrepreneurs towards overcoming poverty. Data were collected from 309 employees of farmer entrepreneurships in Guangxi Province through survey questionnaires. Structural equation modeling was used to conduct an analysis of the effects of three identified capabilities of farm entrepreneurs—economic, educational and knowledge, and socio-cultural capabilities—on attitude towards farmer entrepreneurship growth and the qualitative growth of farmer entrepreneurship and how these in turn affect rural poverty, using AMOS 21. The findings show that socio-cultural capability has the greatest influence on farmer entrepreneurship growth (β = 0.50, p<0.001). The qualitative growth of farmer entrepreneurship also more significantly impacts rural poverty (β = 0.69, p<0.001) than attitude towards farmer entrepreneurship growth. This study suggests that policy makers in China should involve more rural farmers in the targeted poverty alleviation strategies of the government by equipping rural farmers with entrepreneurial skills. This can serve as a sustainable, bottom-up approach to alleviating rural poverty in remote areas of the country. The study also extends the literature on the farmer entrepreneurship-rural poverty alleviation nexus in China, and this can serve as a lesson for other developing countries in the fight against rural poverty.

Purpose -There is a recent growing interest to find a lasting intervention to rural poverty (RP) in developing countries based on farmer entrepreneurship and innovation. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to examine the relation between entrepreneurship and RP alleviation in two resource-constrained provinces of China. This paper assesses the influence of three capabilities of farm entrepreneurseducational, economic and socio-culturalon farmer entrepreneurship growth and how these, in turn, impact alleviation of RP. Design/methodology/approach -Household survey data comprising 363 respondents were taken from four deprived communities in two provinces of China. The paper employed structural equation modeling (SEM), using AMOS 21.0 alongside SPSS 20.0 to test the relations between the constructs. Findings -The results show that a statistically significant and positive relation exists between entrepreneurship and RP alleviation in China. The findings of the study further reveal that qualitative growth of entrepreneurship has a stronger positive influence on RP alleviation than on quantitative growth, and socio-cultural capabilities of respondents significantly and positively affect entrepreneurial growth of farmers, rather than education and economic capabilities.Research limitations/implications -The use of data from four communities in two provinces tends to limit the ability to generalize the findings of the study. Furthermore, the survey did not collect information on non-farm entrepreneurs, making it impossible to compare the findings from farm entrepreneurs with non-farm entrepreneurs. Practical implications -The findings have practical implications for policy makers in rural China toward addressing targeted RP. This paper, therefore, suggests that entrepreneurship should be pursued vigorously among farmers in rural areas of China to help solve poverty. The paper also presents a useful lesson for various stakeholders in poverty alleviation programs in other developing countries. Originality/value -This paper contributes to the academic literature on the entrepreneurship-RP alleviation nexus by combining the theory of capability and SEM in the analysis of an emerging economy such as China.

With China's rapid economic growth over the past three decades, the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) has become more serious to the environment, with debilitating effects on both flora and fauna. This paper mainly investigates the relationship among economic growth, energy intensity, and CO 2 emission in China using static and dynamic regressions, Granger causality, and impulse response function.The results show that by comparing the values of different energy intensities, coal consumption is the highest with mean value of 4.296, which is followed by oil (0.817), electricity (0.226), and gas (0.098). Thus, China's heavy reliance on coal consumption is possibly a dominant cause for the increase in carbon dioxide emissions. The results also indicate that CO 2 emissions have an inverted U-shaped link with per capita income, and this supports the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in China. Furthermore, economic growth has a bidirectional relationship with coal energy consumption, while coal consumption also has a bidirectional link with CO 2 emissions. Based on the findings, we suggest that environmental technologies should be improved through efficiency-enhancing strategies to reduce CO 2 emissions.Finally, China's Ministry of Environmental Protection should strictly enforce existing laws and regulations on the environment, and also encourage a shift from the use of fossil fuels to clean energy sources such as ethanol gas, as well as promote the use of eco-friendly vehicles such as electric cars and motors.

This article presents a novel insight into the extent to which social capital, social innovation, and women entrepreneurial activities contribute to rural poverty alleviation. Applying the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique through SmartPLS software version 3.0, data from a total sample of 333 women entrepreneurs in the Agribusiness sector from the Sekyere South District in Ghana were empirically analyzed. The findings from the study highlight the transformative potential of rural women entrepreneurs who utilize social capital from both formal and informal social networks toward rural poverty alleviation. Thus, study results revealed that women entrepreneurship growth performance is positively and significantly associated with rural poverty alleviation. Furthermore, the impacts of social innovation and relational social capital on poverty alleviation showed positive. We recommend that policymakers and development practitioners should empower more women into entrepreneurial activities in the agribusiness sector in rural areas to promote rural poverty alleviation in developing countries.

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Food safety accidents occur frequently, which has caused great harm to people’s health. With the consideration that food quality requires the joint efforts of all members of the food supply chain and that quality-improving efforts for food have a positive external effect, we focus on the quality-improving effort level, which is very important for food quality and safety. This paper builds an evolutionary game model and employs the replicated dynamic equation to study evolutionarily stable strategies of suppliers and producers. Furthermore, simulation experiments are conducted to verify the modeling analyses and demonstrate the influences of game parameters. The research results show that the behavioral strategies are closely related to the factors such as the ratios of the input to the output, the cost of quality-improving efforts, the hitchhiking benefits, and the initial strategy. Only when the punishing dynamics of the government exceeds a certain value, both participants can choose the quality-improving effort strategy. Based on the results, this paper has provided some inspiration for policy-making of government institutions.

Purpose Social network and being a part of an established business network helps in the acquisition of resources. The purpose of this study specifically looked at the mechanisms through which network reliance (NR) influences the entrepreneurial performance (PERF) among rural farmer entrepreneurs in China. Design/methodology/approach The paper looks at the economic sociology perspective of social networks. A total of 450 rural farmer entrepreneurs were interviewed for the study. The study introduces emotional intelligence (EI) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) into the relationship between NR, knowledge acquisition (KA) and entrepreneurial PERF. Findings The result shows that KA partially and positively mediates the relationship between NR and entrepreneurial PERF. EO is shown to moderate the relationship between KA and entrepreneurial PERF apart from its direct effect on entrepreneurial PERF. The EI of rural farmer entrepreneurs has a direct and significant effect on KA but does not moderate the relationship between NR and KA. Originality/value This study provides a new direction for extension education to rural farmer entrepreneurs. Knowledge building capacity programmes for rural farmer entrepreneurs should be an area of priority for extension education. Building the social capital and entrepreneurial capacities of rural farmer should be a new area of focus for policymakers. These measures will go a long to improving the capabilities of rural farmer entrepreneurs, which will, in turn, impact positively on their PERF.