Abstract
The substitution of chemical pesticides by biopesticides is crucial to ensure the quality of agricultural products and to foster environmental sustainability. This study takes the willingness and the behaviors of rice farmers on the application of biopesticides as the research object. The survey questionnaire was designed based on the theory of rational small-scale farmers from three aspects: “individual and family characteristics of farmers”, “cognition of farmers” and “external factors”. The survey was then conducted on 163 rice farmers in seven prefecture-level cities in Jilin Province of China. The logistic model was used to analyze the influencing factors resulting in the deviation of the behaviors of the rice farmers from their initial willingness on the application of biopesticides. The explanatory structure model (ISM) was used to analyze the logical hierarchical relationship among various influencing factors. The results show that: (1) For 45% of the farmers surveyed, there’s a deviation between their willingness and behaviors regarding the application of biopesticides; (2) Among the significant factors leading to the deviation between farmers’ willingness and behaviors concerning the application of biopesticides, the surface-level direct factor is biopesticide awareness. The mid-level indirect factors are agricultural product quality and safety awareness and the deep-level root cause is farmers’ education level. (3) The primary reason for the deviation of the farmers’ behaviors from their willingness is their lack of knowledge about biopesticides and the biopesticides’ incomplete market structure. Based on the comprehensive analysis, it is recommended to improve the professionalization of the farmers, to strengthen the publicity of green production and to accelerate the formulation of the biopesticides market to further promote the usage of biopesticides.
Highlights
The amount of pesticides used globally to control crop pests and diseases is estimated to be around 6 million tons per year
Before adopting the logistic regression model, the possible multicollinearity in the explanatory variables was firstly diagnosed by the multicollinearity test and the results showed that the variance inflation factors (VIF) were all less than 10, indicating that there’s no multicollinearity among the variables
As seen from the regression results of the logistic model in Table 4, eight significant factors are influencing the deviation of behaviors and willingness of biopesticide application of rice farmers and the systematic composition of the deviation is determined as
Summary
The amount of pesticides used globally to control crop pests and diseases is estimated to be around 6 million tons per year. The effective utilization rate of pesticides is less than. 30% while the non-effective misusage is as high as 70% [1]. Residual pesticides in the environment spread rapidly under wind, rain and other meteorological conditions, leading to the condition where pesticide residues are trapped in the air, oceans, soil and organisms worldwide [1]. The total amount of pesticides utilized in China in 2019 was still as high as 1,392,000 tons and the average dosage of pesticide application reached 8.39 kg/ha, which was higher than the internationally accepted upper limit of 7.5 kg/ha based on safety considerations [2]. The massive use of chemical pesticides will not place heavy pressure on the ecological environment, it will
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