| It is of great strategic significance to study the agricultural technology adoption behavior of scaled rice farmers—the new agriculture business entities to promote the wide adoption and application of agricultural technologies and ensure food security in China.In this paper,we take 395 scaled rice farmers—the new agriculture business entities in the south of Jiangsu Province as the research objects.Firstly,we define some important concepts about adopting the agricultural technology,and introduce details of the theoretical basis of the adoption behavior of agricultural technologies.Secondly,we describe the motivation of decision making and the characteristics of the adopted agricultural technologies,the policies which changes the adopted agricultural technologies,and the relationship between the adoption and demand of the agricultural technologies.Based on the data collected from 395 scaled rice farmers in the south of Jiangsu Province,we use the binary logistic regression method to analyze the influence factors of the demand of agricultural technologies,taking the planting technology for new varieties,the control technology for plant diseases and insect pests,the technology for formula fertilization by soil testing and the mechanized technology as examples.Next,some empirical research is done on the influence factors of the farmers' adoption behaviors of the agricultural technologies.According to the roles and functions,the agricultural technologies studied in this paper can be classified into two types:production-increase technologies(such as the planting technology for new varieties,the technologies for high-yield cultivation and formula fertilization by soil testing)and environmental-friendly technologies(such as the organic fertilizer technology,the technology for formula fertilization by soil testing,the seedling throwing technology and machine transplanting technology).We study the influence of the subsidy policy on the adoption of production-increase technologies and the influence of the resource endowment of scaled rice farmers on the adoption of environmental-friendly technologies by using binary logistic regression,binary probit regression and LPM model.After that,based on the data collected from traditional retails in Hubei province and scaled rice farmers in Jiangsu province and taking the conservation tillage technology for example,this paper uses the binary Probit model to analyze the difference of adoption behaviors between these two types of farmers and makes deep research on the factors which cause the difference.After that,the hierarchical structure and interrelationship between the influencing factors of adoption behaviors of the protective farming technology of the traditional small households and the scaled rice farmers are studied using the explanation structure model.With the theoretical research and empirical research described above,this paper formes the following conclusions:(1)The theories of the new agricultural business entities are quite rich,which not only consist of the types,characteristics,faced problems,impact on agricultural modernization and the functional orientation,but also contain conditions and suggestions to cultivate new agricultural business entitiesThe new agricultural business entities could be mainly classified into four types:leading specialized households,family farms,farmers' professional cooperatives,and leading enterprises of agricultural industrialization.They have the development tendency that the heads of households are male,younger,better educated,organized,and socialized.They implement scale and intensive management,and have higher management level.Further more,they work on specialized farming,introduce market-oriented policies and have better brand building,which bring high rate of commercialization,better profitability,diverse sources of funding and better benefit maximization.The problems of new agricultural business entities face are that,related funds for the development of new agricultural business entities are not well implemented,and excessive charges and subsidies mismatching for new agricultural entities still exist.The effect on agricultural modernization of new agricultural business entities are mainly shown in the following three aspects.The first one is that they could make the agricultural market marketable,branding and greening.The second one is that,the "aging" process of agriculture can be slowed down to some extent.The third one is that they will improve the land productivity,capital productivity,labor productivity and the level of intensivism.The function of leading specialized households is to make the agricultural products supply stable and incremental in our country,participate in the transfer of land actively and provide technical guidance and instruction for the traditional farmers.The function of family farms is to improve agricultural products quality,safety factor and agricultural infrastructure,and solve the problem of local idle labor.The function of farmers' professional cooperatives is to solve the contradiction between small production and big market,create a regional characteristic agriculture;make the rural culture forward,and transform the rural collective economy.The function of leading enterprises of agricultural industrialization is to extend the agricultural industry chain,improve the profit,promote our agricultural products in international competition,and provide management demonstration and finance support for the development of agriculture.The conditions of cultivating the new agricultural business entities include that,the foundation of developing new agricultural business entities is economic profits,establishing the support system of cultivation policies of new agricultural business entities consisting of finance,credit,insurance and taxes,and creating good legal environment and institutional environment.The advice to develop new agricultural business entities includes that,improve the rural land contracting policy,improve the support policy,quickly counterpoise the pace of urban and rural development,deepen rural financial reform.(2)The motivation of decision making of adopting agricultural technologies can be divided into two kinds.The normal characteristics of adopting agricultural technologies contain many aspects.The strategies of behavior change of agricultural technology adoption could be classified into two types.There is not only difference but also linkage between the adoption behaviors and the demands of agricultural technologiesThe motivation of decision making of adopting agricultural technologies contains utility maximization and risk minimization.The characteristic of adopting behaviors include the economic advantage,periodicity,market leading and risk of agricultural technology adoption.Also,the adoption of agricultural technologies is a learning process.The characteristics of present agricultural technology adoption include diversification,urgency,autonomy enhancement and technology simplification of agricultural technology adoption.There are also two kinds of strategies to change the farmer's agricultural technology adoption behaviors,namely the entities oriented strategies and the environment oriented strategies.The difference between the behaviors and the demands of agricultural technologies lies in that the concept of the two are different.And the connection between them is reflected in that the farmers' demands for agricultural technologies is the premise of the agricultural technology adoption behavior,the farmer's demands for agricultural technology trigger the motivation,and the farmers' technical motivation causes the technology adoption behavior.Only the farmers have an effective demand for agricultural technologies can they promote the adoption of agricultural technologies,and ultimately achieve the effective promotion of agricultural technology application.(3)The scaled rice farms show a variety of features and lots of factors influence their technology demands of new varieties,plant diseases and insect pest prevention,formula fertilization by soil testing and mechanized technologiesScaled rice farmers show characteristics of male,younger,professional,better educated and scale.In the human capital characteristics of households,the gender of scaled rice farmers significantly and positively affect their technology demands of new varieties,plant diseases and insect pest prevention,formula fertilization by soil testing and mechanization.The age of scaled rice farmers negatively affect their demands of the pest control technology and mechanization technology.Whether the scaled rice farmers have a part-time job negatively influences their demands of the mechanization technology.The education level of scaled rice farmers has a significant positive impact on the demands of technologies of new varieties,plant diseases and insect pest prevention,formula fertilization by soil testing and mechanization.In the factors influencing the willingness to plant,the cultivation scale has a significant positive impact on their demands of the plant diseases and insect pests prevention and control technology.The initiative of the farmers has a significant effect on the demand of technologies of formula fertilization by soil testing and mechanization.In the factor of grain subsidy policy,the satisfaction degree of scaled rice farmers with national grain subsidy policy has a significant and positive effect on their demands of technologies of new varieties,plant diseases and insect pest prevention and formula fertilization by soil testing.(4)The grain subsidy policy has influence on the scaled rice farmer's adoption of production technologies,and the resource endowments have influence on the scaled rice farmer's adoption of environmental friendly technologiesThe grain subsidy policy has influence on the scaled rice farmer's adoption of production technologies.The grain subsidy policy has a significant and positive effect on the adoption of production technologies,namely the more the grain subsidy they get,the more it is possible to adopt the production technologies.The satisfaction about the grain subsidy policy influence has a significant and positive effect on the adoption of production technologies,namely the more satisfied they feel about the grain subsidy policy,the more likely they will adopt the production technologies.The resource endowments of scaled rice farmers have a significant effect on their adoption behaviors of environmental friendly technologies.In the variables that reflect the resource of human capital,the younger farmers are more likely to accept the environmental friendly technologies.In the variables that reflect the resource of social economy,the farmers who join in the cooperatives can better adopt and promote the environmental friendly technologies compared with the farmers who don't take part in.The farmers who receive high total income are more likely to use environmental friendly technologies.The higher proportion of non-agricultural income,the less possible they use environmental friendly technologies.In the variables that reflect information resource,the more information acquisition channels there are,the greater probability they accept the environmental friendly technologies.(5)There are many factors that affect the adoption of the protective farming technology of the traditional small planting households and the scaled rice farmers.There are common and different factors between the two types of households,with a certain hierarchical structure relationshipThe factors that influence the adoption of the protective farming technology of the traditional small households are gender,level of education,family population,average income in the family,the existing value of housing and whether to participate in agricultural technology training.The factors that affect the adoption of the protective farming technology of scaled rice operator are level of education,the area of rice cultivation,average income in the family,whether to provide subsidies for machinery,whether to participate in the agricultural technology training and land transfer.Among them,the level of education,the average income in the family,and whether to participate in agricultural technology training are the common factors.Gender,family population and the present value of the house are the factors that influence the adoption behavior of the protective farming technology of traditional small households.And the cultivating scale of the rice,whether to provide subsidy for machinery and land transfer are the factors that influence the adoption behaviors of the the protective farming technology of the scaled rice farmers.Among the factors that influence the the traditional small households to adopt the protective farming technology,family population,the present value of the house and the level of education are the direct surface factors,the average income in family is indirect middle factor and gender and whether to participate in agricultural technology training are the deep primary factors.As the deep primary factors,gender and whether to participate in agricultural technology training directly influence the indirect middle factor—the average income in the family.Also,the indirect middle factors directly influence the direct surface factors.Finally,it causes the result that the traditional small households adopt the protective farming technology.Among the factors of the scaled farmers to adopt the protective farming technology,the average income in the family is the direct surface factor,the area of rice cultivation is the indirect middle factor And the level of education,whether to provide subsidy for machinery,whether to participate in agricultural technology training and land transfer are the deep primary factors.These deep primary factors directly influence the indirect middle factor—the area of rice cultivation,the indirect middle factor directly affects the direct surface factor—the average income in the family,and the direct surface factors directly influence the adoption behavior of protective farming technology.The possible innovations are mainly shown in the following three aspects:(1)Through the analysis of the existing related research,we find out the research at home and abroad is mainly focused on the factors that influence the adoption behavior of the normal and traditional small households.There is little research about the factors that influence the adoption behavior of the agricultural technologies of the scaled rice farmers who appear after the new land transfer policy is implemented in China,which is bad for the application of agricultural technologies.So in this paper,based on the collected data in Jiangsu province,we first divide the agriculture technologies into the technology of new varieties needed during sowing,the technology of plant diseases and insect pest prevention and formula fertilization by soil testing during growing and the technology of mechanization during harvest.And then we do empirical research on the influencing factors of adoption behaviors of the above four planting technologies adopted by scaled rice farmers,which has certain innovation from the perspective of research angle.(2)According to the function and the role,in this paper we classify agricultural technologies into two types:the production-increase technologies and experimental friendly technologies.Based on the collected data of scaled rice farmers,we do empirical research on the grain subsidy policy's influence on the adoption behaviors of production-increasing technologies and analyze the resource endowments' influence on environmental friendly technologies.It has certain innovation from the perspectives of research content and research angle that we do research on the influencing factors of the farmers' adoption behaviors of multiple agricultural technologies.(3)According to the area of rice cultivation,we classify the farmers into two types—the traditional small households and the scaled rice farmers.With the two different types as the research objects,we deeply analyze the influencing factors and their difference of the adoption behaviors of these two types of farmers.Based on the above research and using explanation structure model,we analyze the hierarchical structure and interrelationship between the influencing factors of adoption behaviors of the protective farming technology of the traditional small households and the scaled rice farmers.There is certain innovation from the perspectives of research content and research methods. |
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