An Empirical Research On Preference Of Peasant Households Choosing Rice Planting Techniques

This study is on the basis of agricultural technology innovation diffusion theory, and theory of induced agricultural technology. Through the survey of Taizhou peasant households, the paper presents the situation of peasant households choosing rice planting techniques. Binary Logit models were used to study the technology selection factors.The description analysis of the situation of peasant households choosing high-quality rice varieties showed that:With the per capita income levels increase, the proportion of households who select high-quality varieties increases. At every income level, the difference of selection from different types of households is not obvious. In general, non-agricultural households like high-quality rice varieties more, compared with the semi-agricultural households, and semi-agricultural households like high-quality rice varieties more, compared with the pure-agricultural households.The description analysis of the situation of peasant households choosing labor-saving technology showed that:With per capita income levels increase, the proportion of households who choose labor-saving technology increases. In low-income families and middle-income families, at both inseminating and harvesting, non-agricultural households like labor-saving technologies more, compared with the semi-agricultural households (the only one pure-agricultural household sample chose capital-saving technologies at both inseminating and harvesting); while in high-income households, there is no significant difference among the behavior of different types of households. In general, at both inseminating and harvesting, non-agricultural households like labor-saving technologies more, compared with the semi-agricultural households, and semi-agricultural households like labor-saving technologies, compared with the pure-agricultural households.The empirical analysis of peasant households choosing rice planting techniques showed that:agricultural decisions maker’s gender, age, physical condition, household type, family income, the number of agricultural labors, the number of the elderly and children, per capita arable land area, arable land fragmentation rate, the most main agricultural information source is the agricultural technologies extension services or not, the time of agricultural training in the past five years, have a significant effect on peasant households choosing high-quality rice varieties. Agricultural decisions maker’s gender, age, education level, physical condition, household type, agricultural expenditures, the number of agricultural labors, per capita arable land area, the largest land area, arable land fragmentation rate has a significant impact on peasant households choosing labor-saving technology in inseminating part; agricultural decisions maker’s gender, education level, physical condition, household type, agricultural expenditure, the number of agricultural labors, arable land fragmentation rate have a significant effect on peasant households choosing labor-saving technology in harvesting part.