Economic and Environmental Effects of Farmers’ Green Production Behaviors: Evidence from Major Rice-Producing Areas in Jiangxi Province, China

Mengling Zhang, Li Zhou, Yuhan Zhang and Wangyue Zhou ()
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Mengling Zhang: College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Li Zhou: College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Yuhan Zhang: School of Economics and Management, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang 330044, China
Wangyue Zhou: School of Management, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou 310012, China

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 10, 1-23

Abstract: This study examines the economic and environmental impacts of green production practices among farmers. It aims to contribute to sustainable agricultural development, mitigate agricultural non-point source (NPS) pollution, and align environmental protection with economic growth. This paper utilizes survey data from 1345 farm households in the main rice production areas of Jiangxi Province, China, using the example of reduced fertilizer application (RFA) among rice farmers. This study constructs a slack-based measure data envelopment analysis (DEA—SBM) model with undesirable outputs to measure environmental effects and applies an endogenous switching regression model (ESRM) to test the economic and environmental effects of farmers’ adoption of green production technologies. We found the following: (1) The RFA behavior of farmers has a significant positive impact on their net profit per hectare (NPH), helping farmers increase their income, with the increase ranging from 2.05% to 6.54%. (2) Farmers’ RFA behavior has a significant positive impact on agricultural green productivity (AGP), contributing to the improvement of the environment, ranging from 44.09% to 45.35%. (3) A heterogeneity analysis found inconsistencies in the income-enhancing and environmental-enhancing effects at different quantiles of NPH and AGP. Therefore, attention should be placed on improving the agricultural product quality supervision system under the market circulation mechanism, creating land scale conditions conducive to the promotion and application of fertilizer reduction technologies and promoting the implementation of externality internalization compensation systems.

Keywords: green agricultural development; reduced fertilizer application; rice farmers; economic and environmental effects; endogenous switching regression model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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