Mechanisms Underlying Farmers’ Intention To Adopt Pro-Environmental Agricultural Technologies

Adoption of pro-environmental agricultural technologies can effectively contain agricultural non-point source pollution.However,farmers are dependent on the use of chemical inputs such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides,and their intention to adopt such technologies is low.In fact,farmers’ intention plays an essential role in adopting pro-environmental agricultural technologies in real societal settings.Therefore,to enhance farmers’ intention to adopt pro-environmental agricultural technologies can then guide them to implement spontaneously.By integrating the Theory of Planned Behavior(TPB)and Value-Belief-Norm(VBN)theory into a coherent framework,this study examines and compares the underlying mechanisms that drive the formation of farmers’ intention to adopt pro-environmental agricultural technologies such as liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films.Structural Equation Modeling(SEM)analysis for 1347 farmers in Urad Front Banner and Otog Front Banner of Inner Mongolia indicates:(1)Rational decision-making and moral norms drive the formation of farmers’ intention to adopt liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films,respectively.Results shows that Attitude in the TPB has significantly a positive impact on farmers’ intention to adopt liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films.Subjective Norm and Perceived Behavioral Control also have positive impacts on farmers’ intention to adopt liquid fertilizer.This indicates that rational decision-making has an impact on the formation of farmers’ intention to adopt liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films.Personal Norm in the VBN positively affects farmers’ intention to adopt liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films and it is activated by the sequential process of " Biospheric Values → New Environmental Paradigm → Awareness of Consequences → Ascription of Responsibility → Personal Norms ".This indicates that moral norms also has an impact on the formation of farmers’ intention to adopt liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films.(2)New Environmental Paradigm has an impact on Attitude,Subjective Norm,and Perceived Behavioral Control.This suggests that farmers who believe that people and the natural environment should live in harmony are more likely to have more positive attitudes toward the use of liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films,to perceive greater social pressure,and to increase their self-perception of overcoming difficulties and obstacles they encounter.(3)Subjective Norm has a profound effect on Personal Norm,which in turn had an indirect effect on farmers’ intention to adopt liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films.This suggests that when farmers feel great social pressure,their sense of moral obligation to adopt pro-environmental agricultural technologies increases,which in turn increases the intention to adopt liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films.(4)Pro-environmental agricultural technologies with more obvious economic benefits are more likely to stimulate farmers’ intention to adopt them,and farmers prioritize the economic benefits of pro-environmental agricultural technologies in the short term when adopting them.Our findings provide evidence that the TPB model performs better than the VBN model and the integrated model in predicting behavioral intention to adopt both liquid fertilizer and biodegradable films,and the TPB model explained the adoption intention of liquid fertilizer better than biodegradable films.Compared to biodegradable films,liquid fertilizer is more likely to generate farmers’ intention as it can both reduce environmental pollution and bring economic benefits in the short term.