Research on Online Sales of Low-Carbon Agricultural Products by New Urban Agricultural Business Entities: Evidence from Shanghai, China

Abstract

Traditional agricultural business entities present environmental problems such as high energy consumption and high pollution. To achieve goals such as carbon capping and carbon neutrality, governments should encourage urban agricultural operators to sell low-carbon agricultural products online. This could play an important role in smoothing the connection between production and marketing, achieving industrial prosperity and promoting low-carbon agricultural development. This paper explores the formation and behavioral transformation of online sales intention by combining the theory of planned behavior, the Motivation–Opportunity–Ability (MOA) model, and the binary Probit regression model using data from 106 questionnaires. The study found that economic expectations and social norms can significantly improve online sales intention during the formation stage of online sales intention. Behavior control is not conducive to improving online sales intention. In addition, we found a gap between the willingness of urban agricultural operators to sell online and their behavior. This gap requires activation and adjustment of the opportunity and capability factors in the behavior transformation phase. Finally, we found that the strengthening of policy conditions and management capacity facilitated the transformation of urban agricultural operators’ willingness to sell online into behavior. This paper provides recommendations for the online sales of low-carbon agricultural products. While we continue to deepen urban agricultural operators’ knowledge of online sales, we should also pay attention to the creation of external opportunities that are suitable for the development of online sales, and identify differences in capacity among operators. This will provide precise services.