Does Land Approval Facilitate Conservation Tillage? An Examination through the Lens of Straw-Returning Technology

Zhiwu Yang, Jinling Bu, Jiahan Qi, Qing Liu () and Yan Song ()
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Zhiwu Yang: Department of Agriculture and Forestry Economics and Management, School of Economics and Management, Northeast Agricultural University, Modern Agricultural Development Research Center, Harbin 150030, China
Jinling Bu: Department of Agriculture and Forestry Economics and Management, School of Economics and Management, Northeast Agricultural University, Modern Agricultural Development Research Center, Harbin 150030, China
Jiahan Qi: Department of Insurance, School of Economics and Management, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China
Qing Liu: Department of Land Resources Management, School of Public Administration and Law, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China
Yan Song: Department of City and Regional Planning, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3140, USA

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: Well-defined and stable property rights play a pivotal role in shaping human economic behavior by averting the tragedy of the commons. This study employs micro-survey data from Heilongjiang Province, China, to empirically investigate the impact and mechanisms of land approval on the adoption of straw-returning technology by farmers. Utilizing the Probit model and mediation and moderation effect testing methods, the findings reveal the following: (1) Land approval significantly promotes the adoption of straw-returning techniques by farmers, with a marginal effect of 0.288. This view is further validated through counterfactual inference constructed using the propensity score matching method. (2) Endowment effects mediate the relationship between land approval and farmers’ adoption of straw-returning technology. (3) Digital skills and farming scale negatively moderate the policy’s impact on farmers’ adoption of straw-returning technology. (4) In terms of control variables, the age of farmers and the dispersion of cultivated land have a significant negative impact on the adoption of straw-returning technology by farmers, while training related to agricultural straw-returning skills and government technology promotion significantly positively affects the use of straw-returning technology by farmers. Therefore, the clarity of land property rights helps to harness the policy effects of land approval and provides a research approach for countries with communal land ownership to implement actions for soil quality conservation.

Keywords: land approval; straw-returning technology; endowment effect; conservation tillage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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