Study On The Behavior Of Farmers In Environment-friendlty Agricultural Technology Extension

With the development of the rural economy, rural environmental pollution and ecological destruction became increasingly prominent. The escalation of pesticides, fertilizer and agricultural film pollution and the serious pollution of straw burning, sewage irrigation and breeding industry with the rapidly spread of the township industrial pollution lead to the degradation of agricultural ecosystem. The vegetation destruction and serious land degradation become key factors which affect the health of farmers and threaten the sustainable development of rural economic. As the traditional major rice producing area of China, Dongting Lake area faces the problems of over-development of land and water, inefficient use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and serious destruction of agricultural ecological environment resources with the decline of comparative advantage in rice cultivation. In recent years, rural environmental protection issues began to get the attention of the various aspects while the protection and improvement of the ecological environment in rural areas cannot be separated from the majority of farmers’participation and use of environment-friendly agricultural technology. The public participation in environmental management has been recognized worldwide as one difficult key to solve environmental problems. Farmers are the main units of agricultural production and operation, and the behavior of farmers is the micro-foundation of the diffusion of environment-friendly agricultural technology. The paper takes farmers in the Dongting Lake area as examples to study the needs and motivations, the involved behavior, the decision-making behavior, the mechanism of the proposed policies of farmers with the diffusion of environment-friendly agricultural technology and then proposes policies and measures to promote the farmers involved in environment-friendly agricultural technology diffusion.Technical route of this study is to start from asking questions, theoretical studies and field research, and then goes on theoretical analysis and empirical research on the farmers’ behavior of environment-friendly agricultural technology diffusion with the use of sociology, management and psychology theories. With the comprehensive systematic analysis of a two-stage model of diffusion of environmentally friendly agricultural technology, demand and needs motivation of farmers, the farmers involved in behavior, farmers participation and mechanism of farmers behavior, the paper proposes policies and measures to promote the farmers involved in environment-friendly agricultural technology diffusion. The full text is divided into eight chapters:The first part is an introduction which mainly elaborates the background, the purpose and significance, the research ideas and frameworks and the research methods, and points out the innovation of the study.The second part is the theoretical basis of the paper. Firstly, the paper sorts out home and abroad literature on the diffusion and transfer of agricultural technology and farmers decision-making behavior, and then analysis the process of diffusion of environment-friendly agricultural technology in rural grassroots organizations to propose a two-stage model of environment-friendly agricultural technology diffusion. Secondly, the author further clarifies the key concepts, which means to make theoretical definition of connotation and characteristics of environment-friendly agriculture, environment-friendly agricultural technology, farmers and farmers’behavior.The third, fourth, fifth, sixth parts are the main parts. The third part is the analysis of the farmers’ demand for environment-friendly agricultural technology and demand motivation. According to the survey of rice farmers’attitude to nine kinds of environment-friendly agricultural technology in the Dongting Lake area, the paper analyses farmers demand characteristics for environment-friendly agricultural technology and demand motivations and demand factors. The fourth part is farmers’behavior research involved in environment-friendly technology diffusion. According to the degree of independent decision-making and active participation in the environment-friendly agricultural technology diffusion process and the role in technology diffusion and participation time, the farmers behavior are divided into active participation, cooperative participation, passive participation and no participation; then an empirical analysis of the impact of farmers environmental technology needs motivation on the environmental behavior of farmers is made with SEM structural equation model. The fifth part is research of decision-making process and the decision-making psychology of the farmers on the adoption of environment-friendly agricultural technology. The paper makes analysis of the general processes and characteristics of the farmers to participate in the decision-making of environment-friendly technology diffusion,models decision-making process of farmers to environment-friendly agricultural technology with the introducing of prospect theory,analyses the six typical psychological tendencies of the farmers in the decision-making process in the environment-friendly agricultural technology,analyses and derivates the decision-making psychology and decision-making behavior of modeling farmers and imitative farmers in the environment-friendly agricultural technology diffusion using utility theory of welfare economics and prospect theory, and provides the basis for local government agricultural technology departments to put forward policy to change farmers welfare to change the behavior of farmers. The sixth part is the response mechanism analysis of the farmers involved in environment-friendly agricultural technology diffusion. Using PSR model as the analytical framework, empirical research methods used in this part of rice farmers in the Dongting Lake area to study environmental awareness, attitude towards environment-friendly agricultural technology and its influencing factors.The seventh part is empirical research in which the author takes farmers adoption of pollution-free pesticides and green pesticide in Dongting Lake area for an example and conducts a descriptive analysis of the sample farmers spraying behavior and different farmers. Farmers’ adoption of pollution-free pesticides and green pesticide are significant affected by the village collective organization and involvement variable,the awareness of farmers on pesticide effectiveness and pollution variable, farmer’s cultivated area, farmer’s ability variable including whether served as village cadres or have non-farm income as another business.The eighth part is conclusion and policy recommendations. This part summarizes the main conclusions of the full text, and puts forward policy recommendations to promote farmers taking part in environment-friendly agricultural technology diffusion. Then some feasible policies are proposed such as clearing responsibility of government and related systems security, diversifying agricultural technology popularization system, promoting the level of farmers’ technical education and training, expanding agricultural technology diffusion channel,improving farmers’ participation in environmental management, rationalizing the price relationship between the rice and its resources.etal.