Measuring Rice Farmer’s Pesticide Overuse Practice and the Determinants: A Statistical Analysis Based on Data Collected in Jiangsu and Anhui Provinces of China

Jianhua Wang, May Chu and Yuting Ma
Additional contact information
Jianhua Wang: School of Business, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China
May Chu: Department of Government and Public Administration, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Yuting Ma: School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: Understanding the extent of pesticide overuse and what drives rice farmers to overuse pesticide in agricultural production theoretically and empirically is imperative to increase farmers’ income, promote agricultural transformation and agricultural sustainable development. In this paper, we examined the phenomenon and pattern of pesticides overuse based on the data collected from 861 rice farmers in Jiangsu and Anhui, two provinces in China. By applying the Cobb-Douglas production function (C-D production function) and the damage control model, we estimated the marginal productivity of pesticides. We also adopted the Binary Probit model to further explore factors leading to overuse of pesticide among farmers. Our findings suggested that the marginal productivity of pesticides is close to zero, indicating that there is an excessive use of pesticides in the surveyed areas. According to the Binary Probit model, we also discovered that female farmers, farmers with knowledge about pesticide toxicity, pesticide residue and farmers who hold the view that massive use of pesticide is inimical to the environment, and farmers who participate in pesticide training organized by the government, are more likely to overuse pesticide. On the contrary, experienced farmers have a lower chance of overusing pesticides. Possible explanations to the above findings may be that applying pesticides in accordance with the instructions causes overusing and farmers who are loss-averse, in order to avoid the risk of income loss that may be caused by disease and insect pests, and keep its own income stable, will still increase the amount of pesticide application. It also indicates that farmers are insensitive to increased pesticide overuse.

Keywords: pesticide overuse; marginal productivity; rice production; C-D production function model; damage control model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/3/677/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/3/677/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:3:p:677-:d:134339

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().