Litchi is a traditional tree crop grown in Southern China. Sustainable development of the litchi industry is reliant on technology adoption by farmers. The top grafting technique allows for the introduction of new, quality litchi varieties. The fact that these new varieties ripen earlier or later than the traditional ones helps stabilize litchi prices. Selling new litchi varieties can increase farmers' incomes through higher prices of quality varieties and stabilizing prices by staggering the harvest periods. However, the rate of adoption of top grafting among farmers is low, and up till now, more than half of the litchi trees in China are still traditional litchi varieties. This study explores the factors that influence top grafting adoption by litchi farmers. Using primary data gathered by the China Agriculture Research System of Litchi and Longan (CARSLL) from 567 litchi farming households, a binary logit choice model is employed to determine the factors that influence adoption of litchi top grafting among litchi farmers. The results show that farmers owning larger litchi orchards are more likely to adopt top grafting compared to ones owning smaller orchards. Litchi information accumulation, including experience and training, significantly influences farmers' technology adoption levels. Moreover, a positive attitude toward technology also significantly influences technology adoption behaviours.

The spontaneous pro-environmental behavior (PEB) of rural residents is essential for rural environmental governance. Existing studies have primarily focused on the impact of objective factors on individual PEB, while less attention has been paid to the role of subjective factors, such as rural residents’ subjective well-being, in shaping such behaviors. Based on the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data, this study evaluates the impact of subjective well-being on the PEB of rural residents. The results show that subjective well-being significantly promoted the PEB in both the private sphere with reciprocity and the public sphere with altruistic attributes. Subjective well-being affected PEB mainly by enhancing rural residents’ social interaction and reciprocity with others and raising their fraternity and altruism. Moreover, the positive effect was mainly driven by women and individuals with more environmental knowledge. Therefore, enhancing rural residents’ subjective well-being is not only an important development goal, but also the starting point and foothold of solving the contradiction between economic development and environmental protection and promoting social harmony.

As one of the biggest agroproducts producers, China plays an important role in the global supply. Yet, climate change inevitably threatens their production and leads to tremendous losses. Furthermore, climatic and nonclimatic factors are likely to influence their producing behaviors and yields. Accordingly, this work aims to explore both the qualitative and quantitative nexus between climate change, nonclimatic drivers, and agroproduct yield in China. We choose lychee (Litchi chinensis Sonn.), with world's largest production in China and one of the most demanding agroproduct for climatic conditions, as the subject. A two-way fixed-effect Poisson model with robust standard error is developed based on county-level panel data in 39 main producing counties in China along with climatic and cultural festival factors from 2014 to 2019. The main conclusions are as follows: (a) the lychee culture festival, a nonclimatic driver, has negative effect on lychee yield, and this is a novel effect pathway theoretically and we verify it empirically; (b) climate changes in various phenological phases are significantly correlated to lychee yield; precipitation during the exposure phase or flowering phase has negative effect, and minimum temperature during the heading phase has positive effect, which is the first paper in this field; and (c) a new method is developed to analyze nonnegative yield and production, which could also be applied in other industries.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the effects of mobile Internet adoption on technology adoption extensity.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses cross-sectional data collected in 2018 from 932 smallholder litchi farmers in Guangdong Province and Guangxi Province in southern China. A Poisson regression with endogenous treatment effects (ETPR) model is applied to estimate the effects of mobile Internet adoption on technology adoption extensity.FindingsThe ETPR model results indicate that mobile Internet adoption can significantly enhance technology adoption extensity. In addition, the extensity of technology adoption is also determined by education level, training, share of litchi farming income, guidebook use and cooperative membership. Disaggregated analyses further confirm the positive impact of mobile Internet adoption on the number of capital- and labor-intensive technologies adopted.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature on agricultural technology adoption. The findings highlight the need to facilitate modern agricultural technology penetration by promoting the use of mobile Internet technologies.

The increasingly revealed effects of climate change threaten tropical fruit production. Considerable production loss and unstable yield has been observed in China and other regions with similar climate condition. Accordingly, this paper aims to explore the impacts of environmental conditions, phenological periods, and production endowments on a tropical fruit yield, namely lychee, by using the extended Cobb–Douglas model. Lychee (Litchi chinensis Sonn.) is chosen as the focus of this study given it is one of the most climate‐sensitive tropical fruits which have important contributions to the health, economy, and culture in South China. The growth‐span was divided into four phenological periods, namely: exposure period, heading period, flowering period and maturing period. A two‐way fixed effect model is employed for county‐level mixed‐frequency panel data. This data comprises lychee yield, environmental conditions (mean temperature, minimum temperature, and precipitation), production endowments (labor input, capital input, and technical input), and phenological periods in 39 main producing counties in China from 2011 to 2019. The key conclusions of interest are (1) higher minimum temperature results in larger lychee yield, (2) higher minimum temperature in the earlier phenological period has larger positive impact on lychee yield, and (3) higher growth in technical input causes lower lychee yield, and an explanation is provided. Heterogeneity analysis further implies various effects of the minimum temperature influencing lychee yield. The minimum temperature has a significant positive effect on lychee yield in non‐coastal and non‐western counties, especially in earlier phenological periods.

This study uses a dataset covering 928 small litchi growers in southern China to investigate the determinants of farmers' willingness to adopt digital pest and disease management (DPDM), focusing on smartphone use.

There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that information and communication technology (ICT) and agricultural production outsourcing can improve farm productivity and farmers’ welfare. However, less is known about the relationship between modern ICT use and agricultural production outsourcing. Drawing upon a survey of 855 litchi growers from southern China, this study estimates the effect of smartphone use on farmers’ decisions regarding agricultural production outsourcing. A novel genetic matching method is employed to mitigate the selection bias associated with self-selected smartphone use. Our result confirms the positive role of smartphone use in increasing the number of production tasks outsourced by litchi growers. Moreover, smartphone users are more likely to outsource both labor-intensive and technology-intensive tasks than nonusers. In addition, the treatment effect of smartphone use varies with each specific litchi production task. Our findings highlight the importance of improving smartphone adoption among farmers to promote agricultural production outsourcing.

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