What motivates farmers to adopt low-carbon agricultural technologies? Empirical evidence from thousands of rice farmers in Hubei province, central China

Abstract

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Low-carbon agriculture is essential for protecting the global climate and sustainable agricultural economics. Since China is a predominantly agricultural country, the adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies by local farmers is crucial. The past literature on low-carbon technologies has highlighted the influence of demographic, economic, and environmental factors, while the psychological factors have been underexplored. A questionnaire-based approach was used to assess the psychological process underlying the adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies by 1,114 Chinese rice farmers in this paper, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was empirically employed to test our theoretical model. The results indicated that farmers’ low-carbon production attitude and behavioral efficiency perception directly and positively affected the adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies and indirectly affected it via low-carbon production intention. Besides, production implementation cost and socio-environmental factor could moderate the direct effects of low-carbon production attitude, behavioral efficiency perception, and low-carbon production intention on farmers’ adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies. In this respect, socio-environmental factor yielded more significant moderating effects. Additionally, this research provides policy implications for promoting low-carbon agricultural technologies in developing countries and regions.

Keywords

• low-carbon agriculture
• low-carbon technology
• structural equation modeling
• psychological mechanism
• rice farmer