| Agricultural information technology(AIT)can significantly improve the efficiency of agricultural production,and AIT application can change and reshape the ideas of producers,raise environmental awareness,and encourage the concept of attaching equal importance to both quality and quantity in agricultural production.With accelerating industrialization and urbanization,the shortage of rural labor force has become more serious,and transformation of the agricultural production mode has become more significant.Thus,it is particularly urgent to optimize the allocation of agricultural resources by using IT.At present,some achievements have been made in the application and popularization of AIT in China,and several comprehensive agricultural databases and corresponding measures has been established.However,the popularization of AIT in many areas is not reached to ideal level and remains at demonstration stages.Farmer cooperatives(hereafter,“cooperatives”)are not only a powerful force among China’s new agricultural business entities but also play an increasingly important role in agricultural science and technology innovation and transformation.However,in practice,cooperatives’ adoption of AIT has not been significantly motivated by favorable agricultural development policies.Thus,it is urgent to remove the impediments obstructing cooperatives from reaching their potential adoption of AIT.Thus,on the basis of theoretical analysis,qualitative analysis and quantitative research,this paper tries to study the adoption behavior of AIT of farmer cooperatives,analyzes the influencing factors and mechanism of cooperatives adopt AIT,as well as the influencing factors and mechanism of AIT absorption.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)Technological factors were not positively related to the adoption of AIT.Technological factors were all found to be positively related to leaders’ attitude.The role of technological factors in promoting the adoption of AIT must be realized indirectly through the leaders’ attitude.Leaders’ attitude plays a completely mediating role in the impact of technological factors on AIT adoption.Efforts should be made to improve the positive cognition and comprehensive quality of cooperative leaders on agricultural information technology.There is a coupling relationship among technical characteristics,cooperative characteristics and external environment,which reflects that local cooperatives will get faster development relying on regional advantages.The development of cooperatives urgently needs advanced technology,but also requires simple and easy-to-use technology,and hopes to effectively improve efficiency through agricultural information technology.(2)Environmental factors were found to be more meaningful in explaining the adoption of AIT than the cooperatives’ factors.Leaders’ attitude plays a partially mediating role in the impact of cooperatives’ and environmental factors on AIT adoption.When adopting an information technology,we must consider the actual situation of the funds,human resources and material resources of the cooperative;at present,the scale of the cooperative is small,lack of funds and weak innovation ability,and the policy guidance of the government has a great impact on the adoption of cooperative technology.(3)The results of case study show that organizational readiness,absorptive capacity,knowledge stock and external knowledge sources have positive effects on information technology absorption of farmers’ cooperatives.Cooperatives should effectively acquire external knowledge,understand and explain external knowledge,and realize the continuous accumulation of knowledge stock required for the implementation of agricultural information technology,and then apply it to the use of information technology,reduce the knowledge barriers brought by information technology,and successfully use agricultural information technology.(4)The simulation results of system dynamics model show that: the amount of knowledge transfer,technology absorption capacity,technology absorption level and technology implementation investment increase rapidly in about 0-15 months,and then gradually become stable;when the establishment time of external knowledge source is 0.6 months,the maximum amount of knowledge transfer and knowledge stock are 2.5 times and 2.4 times of the establishment time of 1.5 months respectively.Fully grasp the stage of 0-15 months,and rapidly improve the technological absorption capacity and level of cooperatives.The reduction of the amount of knowledge required for the implementation of information technology can reduce the investment in the implementation of information technology,and the increase of the amount of knowledge will not have any additional difficulty impact on the implementation of information technology after reaching the saturation level;the shortening of the establishment time of external knowledge sources and the increase of social capital available to cooperatives can promote the absorption of technology and reduce the investment in the implementation of technology,but the marginal effect of social capital has a recursive effect The initial infrastructure of technology implementation owned by cooperatives has no significant impact on technology absorption and implementation investment.Based on the research conclusions,this paper puts forward the following countermeasures and suggestions:The first is to build an integrated agricultural information technology development system of "demand research and development promotion";the second is to build a cooperatives talent cultivation system combining introduction of talent and training;the third is to build a government sector security system of "facility construction,platform construction and policy support";the fourth is to build a cooperative knowledge transfer mode of "cooperatives and technology suppliers" to improve the social resources of cooperatives The fifth is to promote the "comprehensive planning and scientific implementation" of agricultural information technology. |
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