How Perceived Stress Affects Farmers’ Adoption Of Green Fertilization Technology

Farmers are the main body to apply chemical fertilizers.Farmers’ adoption of green fertilization technology is one of the important links to practice the concept that Lucid Waters and Lush Mountains are Invaluable Assets,to achieve the goal of Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality,to accelerate the green development of agriculture,and is of great practical significance to alleviate agricultural non-point source pollution,to reduce agricultural carbon emissions,to improve the quality of cultivated land,to ensure food security of the whole country.However,Chinese farmers are reluctant to adopt green fertilization technology for the first time and inimical to adopt green fertilization technology continually.One of the important influencing factors is perceived stress which is a significant predictor of farmer’ s behaviors.Different types of perceived stress stimulated by different stressors affect farmers’ behaviors differently.And farmers’ technology adoption has the stage characteristic.The intensity of perceived stress,the mechanism of the effects of perceived stress on farmers’ adoption behaviors differ in the first adoption stage and the continual stage.Exploring the differences could help to put forward the method to weaken the inhibition of perceived stress on farmers’ adoption behaviors,and to optimize the current agricultural technology promotion policies to improve the efficiency of agricultural technology promotion in the country.In view of this,the paper used 708 micro-surveyed data of tea growers in Qinba Mountain area,measuring the perceived stress of usefulness,perceived stress of difficulty and perceived stress of in-adaptability from three perspectives of Income,Capacity,and Inertial,when farmers adopt green fertilization technology for the first time and continually by the level of initial expectation and expectation-confirmation results respectively based on Expectation and Confirmation Theory and Resources Conservation Theory.Then,Structural Equation Model,mediating and moderating analysis method are used to empirically test the influence of perceived stress on farmers’ adoption behaviors and the mediating and moderating effects of self-efficacy and social support on the relationship in the first and the continual stage.Finally,the main conclusions are as follows:a.Perceived stress significantly inhibit farmers’ first and continual adoption of green fertilization technology,but different types of perceived stress have different inhibitory effects on farmers ’ behavior at different stages of technology adoption.In detail,among the three dimensions of perceived stress,the stress from in-adaptability perception has the strongest inhibitory effect on farmers’ adoption behaviors both in the first and the continual stage,that is,compared with the lack of ‘income’ and ‘ability’,the adoption ‘inertia’ of traditional fertilization pattern has a greater inhibition on farmers ’ adoption behaviors.In addition,in the initial adoption stage,stress from difficulty perception has a stronger inhibitory effect on farmers’ technology adoption behavior,while in the continual adoption stage,the inhibitory effect of stress from uselessness perception on farmers’ technology adoption behavior is prominent.b.Self-efficacy plays a mediating role in the relationship between perceived stress and farmers’ initial adoption and continual adoption.In the two stages of technology adoption,perceived stress inhibits farmers’ adoption of green fertilization technology by reducing self-efficacy.And different types of perceived stress have different weakening effects on farmers ’ self-efficacy in different stages of technology adoption.c.Different types of social support weaken the inhibition of perceived stress on farmers’ adoption behaviors in different degrees.In the continual adoption stage,emotional support has the strongest weakening effect on the inhibition of stress from in-adaptability perception,direct material support has the strongest weakening effect on the inhibition of stress from uselessness perception,support utilization has the strongest weakening effect on the inhibition of stress from difficulty perception;In the first adoption stage,emotional support has no significant weakening effect on the inhibition of stress from uselessness,difficulty and in-adaptability.Direct material support and support utilization have significant weakening effects on the inhibition of farmers’ behavior from the perceived stress from difficulty.Based on the above research conclusions,the following policy implications are proposed : First,set the elimination of farmer’s inertia on regulatory chemical fertilizer using as the goal for the whole process of green fertilization technology promotion.Second,fully consider the perceived stress of farmers’ technology adoption at different stages and take measures to ease them in time.Thirdly,give full play to the externality of the government,provide sufficient material support and technical guarantee,play the role of ‘server’ and‘protector’ of farmers’ technology adoption,improve the first and continual adoption rate of farmers’ green fertilization technology,and accelerate the green transformation of agriculture in China.