Research on the Influence of Education of Farmers’ Cooperatives on the Adoption of Green Prevention and Control Technologies by Members: Evidence from Rural China

Abstract

The study explores the impact of education of farmers’ cooperatives on members’ green production behavior. The Probit, Oprobit model and the mediation effect model are used to analyze the influence mechanism of the cooperative’s education on the members’ adoption of four types of green prevention and control technologies and the overall adoption rate, and the instrumental variable method is used for endogeneity treatment and robustness test. The results show that: (1) The education of cooperatives have a significant positive impact on the members’ physical pest control technology, biological pesticide application technology, water and fertilizer integration technology, scientific pesticides reduction technology, and the overall adoption rate plays a critical role. As a result, there is a certain degree of heterogeneity in different intergenerational member groups. (2) The education of cooperatives can significantly enhance members’ cognition of green prevention and control. (3) Through on-the-spot demonstration and general meetings of the members to carry out education, members are more likely to adopt green prevention and control technologies. These findings shed light on the mechanisms by which cooperative’s education affect the green production behavior of cooperative members and provide important policy implications for green agricultural development.

Farmers' cognition of the COVID-19 outbreak, risk perception and willingness of green production

“…There are significant differences in values and preferences among generations of farmers, and different values influence judgments and behaviors ( Lyons and Kuron, 2014 ; Luo et al, 2022 ). According to the academic standard of dividing the old and new generations farmers and taking into account the actual situation in rural areas, this paper uses 50 years old as the dividing line to classify the new generation and the old generation farmers, and conduct Oprobit and IV-Oprobit regressions on the effect of farmers' cognition of COVID-19 outbreak on farmers' willingness of green production for the two generations respectively.…”

“…Referring to the green production willingness of farmers ( Yu et al, 2020 ; Luo et al, 2022a , Luo et al, 2022b ; Gao et al, 2018 ), we control for nine variables including farmers' gender to explore the effect of farmers’ cognition of COVID-19 outbreak on willingness of green production and their mechanisms of action in this paper. The specific meanings and values of the variables are shown in Table 2 .…”

“…Causing its higher risk perception, and will increase the health investment to improve the ability to resist risk ( Wang et al, 2021 ; O’ Connor and Assaker, 2021 ). For farmers, the lack of medical care, health care and health care facilities, the most convenient and low-cost health investment method is green production, which can not only increase the consumption of healthy food and nutrition intake to improve the body immunity, but also reduce the reduction of chemical residues in soil pesticides and fertilizers, resulting in the reduction of the body's immune damage ( Luo et al, 2022a , Luo et al, 2022b ).…”

Research on the Impact of Members’ Social Capital within Agricultural Cooperatives on Their Adoption of IPM in China

“…Based on previous studies, this paper selected control variables, including respondents’ individual, household, and cooperative characteristics. Specifically, individual characteristics, such as gender [ 6 ], age [ 3 ], and education level [ 5 ], household characteristics, such as family farming area [ 4 ], number of off-farm laborers [ 27 ], and annual household income [ 28 ], and critical characteristics of cooperatives, such as the establishment time [ 29 ], demonstration level (according to the act ‘Opinions on carrying out the construction action of the farmer’s professional cooperative demonstration’ published by Ministry of Agriculture in 2009, the selection principles of demonstration agricultural cooperatives include management democracy, economic strength, the number of members, and social reputation. From low to high, there are four levels of demonstration agricultural cooperatives, including county-level demonstration, city-level demonstration, province-level demonstration, and national-level demonstration), and available capital [ 30 , 31 ] were included.…”

Evolutionary game analysis of green production transformation of small farmers led by cooperatives based on prospect theory

“…Hypothesis 5. Studies have shown that education of farmers can significantly increase farmers' sense of responsibility and reduce farmers' fertilizer use (Ying et al, 2017;Tian et al, 2021;Luo et al, 2022), that moral responsibility, environmental knowledge, and skills can promote farmers' proenvironmental behavior, and that cultivating farmers' sense of moral responsibility and responsibility and running field schools can promote farmers' pro-environmental behavior (Bagheri et al, 2019;Gowda et al, 2021;Khan et al, 2021). Education and training by cooperatives can make smallholder farmers aware of the ecological damage caused by the heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides.…”