Theoretical And Empirical Analysis Of Farmers’ Fertilizer Application Behavior And Influencing Factors

Chemical fertilizer, one of the important input factors in agricultural production, has irreplaceable rolein raising the agricultural yield and the farmers’ income. A series of problems (e.g. soil contamination,water pollution, atmospheric pollution and quality deterioration of agricultural products), however, havebeen incurred from the fast increase of chemical fertilizer application in agricultural production in China,and even agricultural non-point source pollution has been aggravated. Xinjiang, well suited in thenorthwest part of China, where the conditions of agricultural production is rather bad, the farmers’ incomeis pretty low, while the amount and rate of chemical fertilizer application in this province has showed anupward tend. Apparently in the southern part of Xinjiang, the much poorer region, the total amount ofchemical fertilizer application is highly over that in the eastern part of Xinjiang and the world safeapplication upper limit. Farmers are the main participants who make decision in chemical fertilizerapplication. Therefore, to decrease agricultural production cost, to raise chemical fertilizer application rate,to relieve the drain of fertilizer nutrition and even to preserve the rural ecological environment by guardingfarmers properly use chemical fertilizer can make good sense.This paper first reviewed and summed up the covering literature reviews of domestic and foreignresearch, and then tried to construct the theoretical framework of farmers’ fertilizer application behaviorand its influence factors from the respective of the hypothesis of limited rational economical man, theinfluence factors of farmers’ fertilizer application behavior and the game play between government andfarmers.First, the hypothesis of farmers’ fertilizer application behavior is that there exists the developmentprocess from natural man to economical man and then transfers to limited rational economical man, whilethe farmers’ fertilizer application behavior is a complicated and changeable decision-making system whichtakes short-term benefit maximum as its target and selects the appropriate fertilizer combination as to getoptimal yield of agricultural crops. Therefore the farmers’ fertilizer application behavior has the feature ofno constrained to benefit maximum, collective action and path reliance.Second, the farmers’ fertilizer application behavior is mutual affected by inner and outer factors, ofwhich the inner factors provide the possibility of decision-making and become the constraining factors. Theinner factors mainly consist of resources endowment (e.g. natural condition, arable land resources, laborand capital), individual feature (e.g. gender, age, education level, work style, land operation mode,agricultural technology and environmental protection awareness) and psychological factor (e.g. behavioralattitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and behavioral disposition). The outer factorswhich have both motivated and constrained role in farmers’ decision-making are consisted with marketenvironment and political system. More specially, the market environment is referred to informationsources, agricultural product price, chemical fertilizer price, and market risk and competition. On the otherside, the land property rights system, agricultural production organization form, agricultural subsidy policy,agricultural standardized production and agricultural product safety system together with non-officialsystem (e.g. culture conception, values and ethic norm) are grouped in political system.Third, the central local governments are in pursuit of the maximum of ecological and economicbenefit, while the farmers only consider economical benefit maximum. A farmer, as in a group, can beinfluenced by other farmers. The stronger the economical stimulus, the more likely the farmer changeshis/her fertilizer application behavior, and the higher benefit the farmer gets when adapting new technology, the much better the demonstration effect has, and the faster to reach at equilibrium status.Based on the above mentioned theoretical framework, we take the southern part of Xinjiang as studyobject and select Shaya County and Awati County in Aksu prefecture and Shache County in Kashiprefecture as samples, and then deeply analyze the influence factor of farmers’ fertilizer applicationbehavior. The following conclusions were got from field survey and econometric analysis:①The amount of Chemical fertilizer application in the southern part of Xinjiang is higher,accounting for60%of the total application in Xinjiang. Nitrogen and phosphorus are the two main inputs.Kashi and Aksu prefecture are the two regions with higher chemical fertilizer application intension thanother regions. Moreover, the chemical fertilizer application intension in the southern part of Xinjiang isobviously higher than that in the eastern part of Xinjiang, and the total Nitrogen input is also increasingwith the highest intension.②The contribution of chemical fertilizer application to different agricultural crops appears to bevariable in the southern part of Xinjiang. Specifically the contribution to grain and fruits is prominent,while to cotton is lower. Besides, the regional contribution of chemical fertilizer application also differsgreatly. The regions with higher contribution of chemical fertilizer are the place with high increase ofchemical fertilizer inputs. The contribution of chemical fertilizer to grain and cotton in Aksu prefecture isthe highest respectively.③Farmes, as the main decision-maker in chemical fertilizer application, their individual feature (e.g.age, gender, work time on farmland and education level) has direct impact on chemical fertilizerapplication behavior and lead to the marketable vary in the amount of chemical fertilizer inputs andfertilizer type. The decision-making of chemical fertilizer application appears to be diversified, while theinformation channel of fertilizer application is too single. Mutual learn and imitation are only taken amongfarmers which makes the convergence of farmers’ fertilizer application behavior.④Farmers’ education level and the participation degree in agricultural technology training are thetwo factors which have the greatest impact on the choose behavior of chemical fertilizer input, followed bywork hours on farmland, soil quality change, plant scale, labor number, chemical fertilizer price change andthe awareness to utilization rate of chemical fertilizer. All factors except from work hours on farmland andsoil quality change have negative affect on the input amount of chemical fertilizer.As to raise chemical fertilizer utilization rate, to reduce agricultural production cost, to increaseagricultural yield and product quality and even to lower agricultural ecological pollution and finally torealize agricultural sustainable development by guiding farmers properly use chemical fertilizer, we comeup with a whole set of suggestions from different respects:(1) modifying farmer subsidy policy, optimizingchemical fertilizer supply structure;(2) intensifying scientific fertilization technology promotion such assoil testing and formulated fertilizer, low (control)-releasing fertilizer;(3) raising famers’ education leveland instructing them properly use fertilizer;(4) speeding up rural informatization construction andextending fertilizer information channel;(5) promoting agricultural scale management and loweringagricultural production cost;(6) constructing and perfecting fertilizer market price mechanism and socialservice system etc.