Analysis of farmers’ perceptions and behavioral response to rural living environment renovation in a major rice-producing area: a case of Dongting Lake Wetland, China

Abstract

This article combines influencing factors of farmers’ participation in the Rural Living Environment Renovation Project (RLERP) and conceptualizes a model that depicts the relationships between the demographic characteristics of farmers and their perceptions and behavioral response to RLERP. Using a questionnaire survey to collect empirical data, we found (1) A total of 92% of farmers have fully realized the importance of rural living environment, but most people have adopted a wait-and-see attitude and a lack of motivation to participate. (2) A total of 65% of farmers participate in the collection and classification of domestic waste, 22% of the farmers participate in captivity livestock behavior, and 19% of farmers participate in the response behavior of domestic sewage treatment. (3) A significant positive correlation occurs between income level and farmers’ cognition and behavior response. (4) The education standards of the public are not correlated with the farmers’ cognition but is significantly correlated with farmers’ behavioral response. (5) The cognitive and behavioral response of females to RLERP is significantly higher than that of men. 6) In the process from cognition to the action response, farmers’ cognition is positively correlated with action response. On this basis, some measures and suggestions to improve the response of farmers to rural living environment renovation are put forward.

How Do Network Embeddedness and Environmental Awareness Affect Farmers’ Participation in Improving Rural Human Settlements?

“…Combined with the above theoretical analysis and existing research [23,52,67,81], and because the explained variables were dummy variables, this paper adopted the Logit model for empirical analysis with the following preliminarily equation:…”

“…Through the efficient dissemination of environment-related knowledge and information, farmers' environmental awareness can be improved and their sense of responsibility enhanced, which will finally assist them in consciously participating in environmental activities (e.g., IRHS) [73,75,79,80]. In addition, the deeper farmers' understanding of IRHS, the more likely they are to contribute to IRHS [81]. In other words, network embeddedness first promotes farmers' environmental awareness and then affects their participation in IRHS.…”

How Capital Endowment and Ecological Cognition Affect Environment-Friendly Technology Adoption: A Case of Apple Farmers of Shandong Province, China

“…Seemingly, according to the planned behavior theory, farmers’ decisions will also be affected by subjective cognition [ 39 ]. In production, farmers will get an idea about the surrounding ecological environment, which will encourage farmers to make different decisions to adapt to the ecological environment changes [ 40 , 41 ]. Moreover, farmers’ cognition of changes positively impacts their living environment and eventually shaped the adoption behavior of environment-friendly technologies [ 42 , 43 ].…”

Social Network, Cognition and Participation in Rural Health Governance

“…Rational rural residents will choose free-riding behavior and can enjoy the results of rural environmental governance without participating in environmental governance [ 14 ]. Zhenghua Deng’s further classification research found that rural residents enjoying superior economic conditions are more likely to choose free-riding behavior [ 15 ], because rural residents with higher economic incomes show that their rational thinking is more advantageous. Satola, Lukasz et al discussed the influence of a local government’s financial autonomy on governance behaviors [ 16 ], finding that local debt [ 17 ], financial input [ 18 ], and stable rural funding sources [ 19 ] are important factors for the sustainability of environmental governance behavior.…”

“…Satola, Lukasz et al discussed the influence of a local government’s financial autonomy on governance behaviors [ 16 ], finding that local debt [ 17 ], financial input [ 18 ], and stable rural funding sources [ 19 ] are important factors for the sustainability of environmental governance behavior. In addition, rural residents’ income [ 20 ], educational level, age [ 21 ] and sex [ 15 ] have been proven to have remarkable influence on their participation in environmental governance.…”