Environmental conscience, external incentives and social norms in rice farmers' adoption of pro-environmental agricultural practices in rural Hubei province, China

This paper attempts to address a recurring theme in agricultural resources and environmental economics - the low adoption rates of pro-environmental agricultural practices in many developing countries. By improving the Norm-activation model, this paper incorporates external incentives and social nor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental technology 2020-08, Vol.41 (19), p.2518-2532
Main Authors: Zeng, Yangmei, Tian, Yun, He, Ke, Zhang, Junbiao
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural management
Agricultural practices
Agricultural resources
Agronomy
Case studies
Developing countries
Environment models
Environmental conscience
Environmental economics
external incentives
Farmers
Incentives
LDCs
multiple adoption
Norms
pro-environmental agricultural practices
Rice
rice farmers
social norms
Soil testing
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Summary:This paper attempts to address a recurring theme in agricultural resources and environmental economics - the low adoption rates of pro-environmental agricultural practices in many developing countries. By improving the Norm-activation model, this paper incorporates external incentives and social norms into the framework and employs multivariate probit and ordered probit models to explore how environmental conscience, external incentives and social norms influence rice farmers' adoption behaviours and intensive use of pro-environmental agricultural practices. The case study, involving 954 household-level data of rice farmers from rural Hubei province, China, reveals that the adoption rates of certain practices are very low, and that only 6.5% rice farmers adopt three or more pro-environmental agricultural practices. Results show that straw returning and soil testing and fertilizer recommendation are complementaries, and that environmental conscience, external incentives and social norms all positively affect the adoption behaviours, while the adoption intensity is significantly influenced by awareness of consequences, perceived efficacy, external incentives and descriptive norm. These findings underscore that policy interventions to improve rice farmers' environmental conscience, to provide well-designed external incentives and to activate social norms are needed to enhance the adoption of pro-environmental agricultural practices in developing countries.
ISSN:0959-3330
1479-487X
DOI:10.1080/09593330.2019.1574907