| Biotech is a new and independent research field that emerged at the end of 20th century. It was developed based on bioscience including modern molecular biology and has been widely applied in such fields as health care, agricultural production, food manufacturing, resource development, environmental protection and among others. It is believed that biotech will have long-term and significant impacts on human being's society. Farmers over the world have benefited a lot from the application of biotech in agricultural sector, including the adoption of new varieties of genetically modified (GM) animals and plants. Are there any differences between biotech and traditional agricultural technology that farmers have adopted? Which factors will drive farmers to adopt biotech? This empirical study was conducted mainly to answer these two major questions.In China, cotton is a major cash crop, but it is also one of the crops that are susceptible to severe disease and pests as well as insects. Ballworm is one of the main insects that commonly affect cotton. Farmers have traditionally been used to applying pesticide in large quantity to prevent or kill ballworm. This has not only caused problems to environment, human health and biodiversity, but also has led to the ballworm's resistance to pesticide. Bt. cotton is bred by transferring one important element that can kill ballworm, namely, Bacillus thuringiensis (short for Bt.), into cotton and thus it requires less pesticide application.The study aims to explore factors that affect farmers' decisions on whether to adopt Bt. cotton technology or not. The indicators used to do the analysis in this study include households' characteristics, Bt. cotton technology per se, institutional arrangements, cost for adopting the technology, risk of adoption, availability of technology and so on. Both primary data and secondary data were collected. The secondary data were collected mainly from intensive literature review with the combination of the considerations on real situations in rural China. The primary data were collected by questionnaire surveys on those households that cultivated Bt. cotton in 6 villages in Hebei Province, Shandong Province and Henan Province in Year 2000 and those households in 10 villages in Anhui Province and Jiangsu Province in Year 2001. The total sample size of this study is 428.Results of qualitative analysis show that Bt. cotton has advantages over non-Bt. cotton on such aspects as yield, pesticide application and labor input. However, Bt. cotton's seed price is much higher than that of non-Bt. cotton. Therefore, the seed price is one of factors that farmers consider in their decision-making. The analysis also shows that due to the particularity of GM crops, polices can play important roles in the process of adoption.Based on technology adoption theory and the results of single variable analysis, both the probability model and the density model for technology adoption were developed in this study. Both Probit model and Tobit model were employed to quantify factors that influence farmers' decision-making and to predict the extent and directions of the influence.Followings are major results of quantitative analysis: (1) Educational level of the household head, Bt. cottion's yield, reduction in pesticide application, labor input saving and policies on GM crops have a significant positive correlation with the adoption of Bt. cotton technology; (2) The number of years that Bt. cotton has been cultivated in a certain village, which is both a quantitative and a qualitative indicator for availability of technology, has a significant positive impact on the adoption of Bt. cotton technology; (3) Since Bt. cotton's seed price implies the cost of technology adoption and it also increases the risk of technology adoption, the Bt. cotton's price has a negative correlation with the adoption of technology. The relatively high Bt. cotton's seed price slows down the fanners' steps to adopt Bt. cotton technology.Based on the estimation of the empirical models, fo...
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