Herders’ Technology Adoption Behavior And Its Impact On Technical Efficiency

The grassland ecological environment is fragile under the pressure of both climate change and human activities.Therefore,it is crucial to explore a sustainable grazing pattern that can ensure the economic growth of livestock while promoting the sustainable development of grassland ecology.With the development of globalization and intelligent grassland animal husbandry,China’s current development remains relatively extensive.Therefore,as the main body of grassland livestock production,herders’ adoption of livestock technologies is of great significance to improve livestock production efficiency and protect grassland ecology.We focus on two categories of livestock husbandry technologies: Profit-seeking technology,which is represented by fattening and breed improvement,and pro-environmental technology,represented by rotational grazing.Using survey data from herders in ten pastoralist counties in Gansu and Qinghai provinces,this study aims to address two issues:(1)Factors influencing technology adoption among herders.(2)The effect of technology adoption on technical efficiency.The main findings of the study are as follows.(1)Herders’ overall level of technology adoption needs improvement,with the proportion of adoption of any technology at 36.5%.The adoption of profit-seeking and pro-environmental technologies is 23.3% and 22.6%,respectively,with inter-provincial variations.(2)Large-scale production by herders has resource endowment advantages,which can reduce the unit cost of technology adoption and increas willingness to adopt technology.(3)For the substitution effect,the labor transition from rangeland to non-pastoral employment results in labor shortages in livestock husbandry production;leading herders to choose non-labor-intensive technologies.For the wealth effect,higher nonpastoral employment pay reduce reliance on grazing.Non-pastoral employment and its wealth effect strengthen the effect of production size on technology adoption,with heterogeneity in moderating effects by technology type.(4)We calculated the grassland productivity of herders based on remote sensing data and included it in the SFA model to measure the technical efficiency.Technical efficiency measured by livestock income output and livestock slaughter output averaged at 0.58 and 0.39,respectively.To analyze the effect of technology adoption on technical efficiency,the results of the PSM model showed that the average ATT value was 0.02,indicating that technology adoption had a significant positive effect on technical efficiency,and the Tobit model also proved the robustness of the result.Livestock technology can replace and enhance other production factors,improving technical efficiency.(5)Distinguish between profitseeking and pro-environmental technologies,the adoption of both them can promote the herders’ production efficiency.In particular,although rotational grazing is generally regarded as a pro-environmental technology,it can not only protect grassland resources,but also promote the quality of grassland,thus improving the technical efficiency.Based on the above findings,in order to promote the herders’ technology adoption and the efficiency of livestock production,the following suggestions are proposed:strengthening livestock technology training and promotion,particularly for rotational grazing,guiding herders toward reasonable scale production,expanding non-pastoral employment channels,and improving formal and informal systems are also recommended.