Strengthen or weaken? Research on the influence of internet use on agricultural green production efficiency

Abstract

With the rise of “Internet + Agriculture”, existing related research has focused on the impact of Internet use on agricultural productivity. However, few studies have considered the impact on agricultural green production efficiency. This paper employed the SBM model to calculate the agricultural green production efficiency using the observation data of 459 farmers in Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan provinces. Further, the influencing factors, their nonlinear impact, and even the effect of using the internet on agricultural green production efficiency were analyzed. The results show that corn’s average agricultural green production efficiency is 0.44, with the main peak distributed in a low-level range. The impact of the Internet use on agricultural green production efficiency is positively moderated by rural infrastructure, household assets, and educational attainment. Age and arable land area significantly impact agricultural green production efficiency. The endogenous switching regression model (ESR) shows that the agricultural green production efficiency of farmers who do not use the internet will increase by 41.45% if they use the internet. Internet use has a “U-shaped” impact on agricultural green production efficiency, and the threshold value of the farmers’ expenditure to income ratio is 0.0886. The policy aimed at improving agricultural green production efficiency and popularizing Internet use should, therefore, focus on strengthening the emphasis on increasing agricultural green production, increasing investment in rural human capital, providing green production subsidies and green production skills training, improving infrastructure construction in rural areas, integrating and enriching agricultural-related information on the Internet.

Impact Effects of Cooperative Participation on the Adoption Behavior of Green Production Technologies by Cotton Farmers and the Driving Mechanisms

“…Therefore, the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) believes that when the environmental awareness of farmers is weak [7] and policies to promote the adoption of AGPTs by farmers are not as effective as they should be, it is possible to enhance the adoption of AGPTs by farmers through the development of "education, training, and information" through cooperatives [8]. This provides an important idea for this study: to protect the agricultural ecological environment, it is not only necessary to change the agricultural production mode [9] but it is also necessary for farmers to actively adopt AGPTs [10], aim to reduce the adverse impact on the environment in the agricultural production process, improve production efficiency, and protect the quality and safety of agricultural products. At the same time, the educational guidance of cooperatives [6] makes farmers realize the importance and advantages of AGPTs and promotes the transformation of farmers' production and operation into greener production methods [11], thus promoting the development of Chinese agriculture towards the goal of greening.…”

“…The effect of green perceptions on the adoption of AGPTs may also be different among farmers who participate or do not participate in cooperatives. Therefore, the relationship between cooperative participation and AGPT adoption behavior also requires attention to the important contextual factor of green perception [10,20].…”

Investigating the intention and behavior of vegetable farmers to adopt IoT technology: survey—based evidence from China

“…This includes fine planting in fields, facilities, and greenhouses; agricultural products quality and safety supervision; monitoring agricultural production environmental data (such as soil temperature and humidity, nitrogen and oxygen content, environmental temperature and humidity, light intensity, CO 2 concentration, etc. ); providing scientific basis for crop production management; providing the best production conditions for crops; effectively improving crop yields and the overall efficiency of agriculture; thereby promoting the level of automation and intelligence in agriculture (Yu and Bai, 2022).…”

Study on the Impact of Internet Usage, Aging on Farm Household Income

“…Xie further demonstrated that Internet usage was more effective in reducing poverty for full-time farmers than for part-time and non-farmers [10]. Scholars have further explored the specific paths through which farmers use the Internet to increase their income, finding that Internet usage could affect farm household income mainly by raising the selling price of agricultural products [11], increasing total factor productivity [12], promoting off-farm employment [13], and pulling entrepreneurship [13].…”