Study On Excessive Application Of Pesticides Based On Externalities And Farmers' Behavior

The rational use of pesticides in agricultural production can effectively save labor,inhibit pests and diseases of crops,reduce crop production losses,and increase agricultural economic benefits.However,excessive application of pesticides can jeopardize the health and food safety of agricultural producers and pollute the ecological environment such as farmland soil and water resources.The report of the Party's Nineteenth Congress proposed to prevent agricultural non-point source pollution,implement food security strategies,industrial prosperity,ecological livability and other rural rejuvenation strategies.Under this background,accounting for the external costs of pesticides and their over-application,it is imminent to deal with issues such as environmental pollution and food safety caused by a large number of pesticide residues.In order to study the over-application of pesticides,the pesticide application amount of 31 provincial administrative units in China during 1991-2015 were taken as the object of study.Firstly,based on spatial autocorrelation and cold hot spot analysis theory,ArcGIS was used to study the status of pesticide application in China and the spatial distribution of pesticide application.At the same time,the pesticide regulatory policy in each country was compared and analyzed.Secondly,we estimated the overdose of pesticides in China's grain production,and found that previous scholars have paid insufficient attention to the external costs of pesticide use.Most of them are measured from a private perspective,ignoring the loss of public interests in the use of pesticides,and lack of in-depth research on the quantification of external costs of pesticides.Therefore,in order to make up for the insufficiency of the above research,this paper takes the rice,wheat,and corn,the three major food crops in China as an example,and apply Pesticide Environmental Accounting(PEA)tools and Environmental Impact Quotient(EIQ)to transfer the external costs of overuse of pesticides to harm costs for pesticide users,consumers of agricultural products,and non-target organisms in the environment,in order to measure the external costs in pesticide application.In addition,in order to measure the over-application of pesticides from the perspective of maximizing social and private benefits,the external costs were combined with damage control models to estimate the optimal application and over-application of pesticides.Finally,the data of vegetable growers in Pei County,Dafeng County,Qidong County,Jiangyan City,Liuhe District,Nanjing City,and six counties of Changshu City in northern Jiangsu,Central Jiangsu and southern Jiangsu were selected based on the above research.Based on the theory of anchoring effect,the effects ofexternal anchorage and internal anchorage on the overuse of pesticides in rural households were explored,and corresponding policy recommendations were put forward according to the research results.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)From the perspective of pesticide application status in China,pesticide application in China has been increasing year by year,and spatial autocorrelation has been weakening year by year.The concrete manifestations are:First,the areas with higher pesticide application volume migrated from the southeast coastal areas and central regions to the northeast and southwest regions;Secondly,the northeastern region has replaced the southeastern coastal areas as a hotspot for pesticide application(areas with new growth areas),and pesticides have been used in cold-spot areas(areas with new reduction points)from the southeast coast to the central regions;(2)From the perspective of overuse of pesticides,Firstly,the external costs of pesticide application in rice,wheat,and corn food crops are on the rise,and the pollution to the environment is deepening year by year.Secondly,from the point of view of the optimum application amount of pesticides,when the private benefit is maximized,the optimal application amount of pesticide is always greater than the optimal application amount of pesticide when the social benefit is maximized,making the two easily contradictory in the optimal dosage decision of pesticides;Thirdly,the pesticide application amount of the three types of crops exceeds the optimal application amount from the social optimal perspective and the private optimal perspective.Among them,the over-application amount of pesticides in rice is the most,followed by wheat and corn;(3)From the perspective of farm households' overuse of pesticides,firstly,the determination of pesticide application by rural households is more significant than the anchor effect of age,while gender has less effect.Secondly,from the perspective of internal anchors,it was found that farmers with high degree of risk aversion(high anchorage)had higher levels of excessive pesticide use,and households with high price sensitivity(low anchorage)had low levels of excessive pesticide use.The higher the anchor value,the stronger the anchoring effect,and the latter is the opposite.It can be seen that the degree of risk aversion and price sensitivity have a stronger anchor effect on farmers' drug use behavior.Thirdly,from the analysis of external anchors,we found that the richer knowledge of pesticides(high anchorage value)and the stricter the regulation of pesticide sales and application(high anchorage value),the over-application of pesticides by rural households is relatively low,which shows that the training of pesticide application skills and government supervision have a significant effect on the anchoring effect of farmers on excessive drug use behavior.Both show that the higher the anchor value,the stronger the anchoring effect.Establish effective control measures for pesticide application according to different situations:(1)Differential pesticide reduction measures should be adopted in different regions,and large-scale pest and disease prevention and control methods should be adopted in the eastern coastal areas and northeastern regions,while low-toxicity and high-efficiency low-toxicity pesticides and biological pesticides should be applied to ecologically-protected western regions;(2)The public sector should reasonably regulate the production of highly toxic pesticides,develop low-toxicity pesticides and biological pesticides,strengthen the training of pesticide application techniques and the guiding of environmentally friendly drug use practices,and promote the social prevention and control of crop pests and diseases to address the excessive use of pesticides.To reconcile the problem of inconsistent pesticide application in maximizing social and private interests;(3)Classified management should be based on the different characteristics of rural households,pay attention to the training of pesticide knowledge for the elderly farmers,price subsidies for low-toxic pesticides and biological pesticides,and formulate pesticide application management policies such as pesticide application effect assessment criteria and pesticide application record system.Through scientific guidance,farmers can behave more safely and efficiently.