Policy Support or Service Provision? Comparative Driving Mechanisms of Farmers' Digital Technology Adoption in China

Chenyujing Yang

No 404433, 2026 Annual Meeting, July 26 - 28, 2026, Kansas City, Missouri from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Digital technologies have profoundly transformed traditional factor allocation and opened new possibilities for improving agricultural resource use efficiency. However, in smallholder-dominated production systems, agricultural digital transformation is not merely a technical issue, but also a matter of institutional and social embedding. In this context, comparing the differential effects of policy support and market-oriented socialized services on farmers’ adoption of digital technologies is critical for understanding the institutional logic underlying technology diffusion. Drawing on the S-O-R framework, this study integrates the Technology Acceptance Model and the Technology Readiness Index to construct a decision-making model of farmers’ digital technology adoption, which is empirically tested using structural equation modeling. The results show that policy support significantly enhances farmers’ adoption intention but has limited impact on actual adoption behavior. In contrast, market-oriented socialized services, although not directly increasing adoption intention, effectively promote adoption behavior. Moreover, the effects of both policy and services are transmitted indirectly through the pathway of technology readiness and technology acceptance, revealing the psychological mechanisms through which external drivers influence farmers’ behavior. Finally, advantage-integrated farmers are more responsive to government support, whereas resource-constrained farmers rely more heavily on socialized services. By comparing policy-driven and service-embedded approaches, this study not only advances theoretical understanding of digital technology diffusion from individual cognition toward institutional embedding, but also provides a contextually adaptive perspective on farmers’ adoption behavior, offering practical guidance for future policy design and service implementation.

Keywords: Institutional; and; Behavioral; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/404433/files/1 ... ence_from_China6.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:aaea26:404433

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.404433

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2026 Annual Meeting, July 26 - 28, 2026, Kansas City, Missouri from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().