What promote farmers to adopt green agricultural fertilizers? Evidence from 8 provinces in China

Abstract

The utilization of green agricultural fertilizers is a crucial measure in promoting sustainable farming practices, facilitating the development of green agriculture and driving rural revitalization. However, the current adoption rate of green fertilizer in agricultural production remains low. Based on 960 questionnaires and combining individual, product and environment factors, this study used Logistic model to determine the influencing factors of farmers' decisions of green agricultural fertilizers, and used ISM model to analyze the hierarchical relationship among the influencing factors. The results revealed that out of 20 factors that included internal and external influences on farmers' choice of green agricultural fertilizers, 17 were found to significantly impact farmers' behavior. Notably, factors such as crop types, planting method, product price, get information from friends' recommendations and retailers' recommendations, and land fertility emerged as the surface factors affecting farmers' decisions. Furthermore, the deep factors were the farmer's gender and higher educational level, which were the farmer's own factor, and the others were the intermediate factor. The driving mechanism of each factor is different, and the effect is different. The study findings are expected to shed light on future research and policy-making efforts aimed at effectively promoting green agricultural fertilizers to accelerate the green transformation of agriculture and drive rural revitalization.