Research Of Farmers’ Behavior Response To Education Program For Controlling Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution

Research from all over the world indicate that NPS pollution is the major source ofglobal surface and underground water pollution and agricultural NPS pollution contributemost to NPS pollution. The Pollution Report in2010shows that50%amount of nitrogen andphosphorus emissions in waste water is from agricultural practices in2007in China. Thismeans the water pollution of industry-leading in China is changed to a condition ofagriculture-leading but the agricultural NPS pollution should be controlled without delay. Thecontent of laws and regulations promulgated by government for controlling water pollutionare comprehensive and cover a wide range of area. But it cannot meet the demand forcontrolling agricultural NPS pollution because lacking of the specific implementation detailsof controlling the pollution. The pollution choice of single polluter could be adjusted bymarket-based instruments and becomes consistent with social choice. But the difficulty ofprevention of agricultural NPS pollution is unable to effectively monitor the pollution sourcewith a reasonable cost and cannot identify the contribution and treatment cost for individualfamers. This leads the market-based instruments hard to implement for controllingagricultural NPS pollution. Therefore, to fundamentally change the failure situation ofcontrolling agricultural NPS pollution, we should take the farmers as a main part ofcontrolling pollution, devote more attention on education and training to increase farmers’awareness of NPS pollution and their adoption of environment friendly practices, and preventagricultural NPS occurred in the very beginning.The domestic and international research on controlling mechanism of agricultural NPSpollution is the foundation of this dissertation. The analysis of characteristics of public goods,externality of agricultural NPS pollution, cost-benefit of controlling agricultural NPSpollution, and the effects of education to farmers’ fertilizer decision are the theoreticalguidance. First, this dissertation synthesize the sources, causes and controlling status ofagricultural NPS pollution, find out the problems of controlling agricultural NPS pollutionsand illustrate the importance of education in the process of controlling agricultural NPSpollutions. Later then, the positive effects of the education to pollution control and the factorswhich are affect farmers’ awareness of education and training program are confirmed by empirical analysis using soil test and China-UK project as example. Next, farmers’participation behavior in education and training program for control agricultural NPSpollution is analyzed using econometric models which include social capital variables, anddetailed analysis of participation behavior is conducted by the relative ratio method.Thereafter, the effects of education and training program are estimated. The average change infarmers’ fertilizer input for treated farmers who participate in the program relative to theircounterfactual fertilizer input for treated farmers while they did not participate. Therobustness check is carried out for the estimated results. At last, the effective implementationand positive outcome of the education and training program for agricultural NPS pollutioncontrol in the United State.The main conductions of this dissertation are as follows:(1) The effects of education mechanism to farmers’ behavior for controllingagricultural NPS pollution has been discussed by using theoretical and mathematicmethodology, taking fertilizer input as example. Theoretically, Education program influencefarmers’ cognition of agricultural NPS pollution, thereby influence farmers’ decisions offertilizer input, and eventually leading to a reduction in the amount of farmers fertilizer inputs.Empirical results show that participated farmers decrease the fertilizer input andnon-participated farmers increase the fertilizer in the village with education and trainingprogram. These results represent that education and training projects do have positive effectsto farmers’ fertilizer use. Professional training staff in villages or towns can help to reducefarmers’ fertilizer input. In this case, farmers can quickly obtain help and apply fertilizer inmore rational way when they have problem with applying fertilizer in the process ofagricultural practices. Meanwhile, farmers’ cognition of the education program for controllingagricultural NPS pollution is significantly affected by the numbers of family members,communication with friends and friends, farming income and land area.(2) Farmers’ social capital and education variables significantly impact farmers’participation in education and training program for controlling agricultural NPS pollution.The communications with friends or relatives, farmers’ social capital, reduce the possibility offarmers’ participation in education and training program. The probability of farmers’participation will increase if farmers can join training classes near the village or town, havegood training experience, and support laws and rules to restrict fertilizer input. Moreover, theresults using single factor analysis show that farmers with different characteristics choosedifferent training methods. Younger farmers (under30years old) prefer the demonstrationzone as well as farmers meeting; farmers with agricultural income ratio between0.41-0.6have the highest probability of brochures and posters; the probability of farmers’ participation in each training methods of the education program is quite high when farmers can jointraining classes near the village or town, have good training experience.(3) Soil testing and China-UK program reduce a certain amount of farmers’ fertilizerinput. If the farmers involved in soil testing and fertilizer program, compared to farmers notinvolved in the program, the difference between the actual amount of fertilizer inputs andestimated inputs decrease of22.67kg/ha. If the farmers participated in the China-UK project,farmers’ fertilizer inputs decrease56.24kg/ha, the difference between the actual and estimatedfertilizer inputs reduce37.44kg/ha than they are not involved in the program. This indicatesthat national agricultural education program is less effective than China-UK program whichhas small regional scale. Farmers apply65.7kg/ha less fertilizer if they participate theChina-UK program without farmer to farmer training,53.11kg/ha less fertilizer withoutdemonstration zone, and reduce73.92kg/ha of the difference between actual and estimatedfertilizer input. On the other hand, Farmers apply20.8kg/ha more fertilizer if they participatethe China-UK program without posters and brochures, increase19.6kg/ha fertilizer of thedifference between actual and estimated fertilizer input. This means that demonstration zoneand farmer to farmer training are the least effective ways to reduce farmers fertilizer inputswhile posters and brochures are most effective ways among all methods for deliveryinformation of the China-UK program.