Effects of Market Incentives and Livelihood Dependence on Farmers’ Multi-Stage Pesticide Application Behavior—A Case Study of Four Provinces in China

Abstract

Improvement in pesticide application and efficiency structure has long been recognized as having great significance in reducing pollution, ensuring food safety, and promoting green agricultural development. Based on theoretical analysis, using the survey data of 766 farmers in key tea areas in Shaanxi, Sichuan, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces in China, the study empirically analyzes the influence of market incentives and livelihood dependence on farmers’ multi-stage pesticide application behavior. More specifically, the study employed ordered probit analysis to craft its findings. The dependent variable of this study is the multi-stage pesticide application problem of farmers, and the core independent variables are market incentives and livelihood dependence, and the judgment is based on the core variable coefficients of the econometric model of farmers at each stage. The study found the following: (i) Market incentives significantly prompted some farmers to give up synthetic pesticide application and farmers tend to choose green pesticides in the type of pesticide application. (ii) Livelihood dependence meant that the proportion of tea income significantly prompts farmers to apply pesticides, and also creates a tendency for farmers to choose green and low-toxic pesticides in the type of pesticide application. The planting period tends to have a moderate impact on applying green and low-toxic pesticides. (iii) The interaction term of market incentives and the proportion of tea income has no significant impact on farmers’ multi-stage pesticide application behavior. The interaction term of market incentives and planting years has impacted negatively on whether farmers apply pesticides, and has no significant impact on farmers’ choice of pesticide application types, but makes farmers increase the amount of green and low-toxic pesticides. (iv) The education level of the household head significantly promotes farmers to choose green and low-toxic pesticides. Seemingly, the brand effect of pesticides significantly encourages farmers to choose green and low-toxic pesticides. In external support, technical training significantly encourages farmers to choose green and low-toxic pesticides. Furthermore, better infrastructure and local market conditions significantly encourage farmers to reduce the use of conventional pesticides.

Impact on pig farmers of government management to reduce the application of drugs- the case of Chinese pig farmers

“…In this paper, we drew on the existing research results and used 13 factors in three areas that affect the administration of veterinary drugs by pig farmers as independent variables in the model (as shown in Table 8); that is, individual characteristic factors of pig farmers, including sex (Atreya 2007), age (Si et al 2022) and level of education (Chen et al 2016). We also considered pig farmers' household characteristics, including the main business of the household (Ding et al 2022), the number of household laborers (Min Li et al 2021), the scale of household farming (Hu and Yu 2022), whether they participate in farmers' cooperatives (Law et al 2022) and whether they received training in farming (Speksnijder et al 2015). Government policy factors were considered, including the number of times the relevant government departments supervised the application of veterinary drugs by pig farmers (Milani 2017), the number of nes imposed by the government on farmers for the illegal application of veterinary drugs (Zhao and Hu 2021), the compulsory immunization subsidies granted by the government (Shang et al 2018) and the number of government-organized campaigns for the reduction in veterinary drug application (Goodhue et al 2010).…”