Will Social Network Relationship Significantly Enhance Farmers’ Participation in the Supply of Small Water-Saving Irrigation and Water Conservancy Facilities in China?

Abstract

The supply level of irrigation and water conservancy is related to the utilization efficiency of water resources, the production level of farmers, and the supply quality of agricultural products, especially relating to national food security and stability. Based on 1169 pieces of data collected from field surveys in three provinces of China in 2019, an evaluation system of social network relationships was constructed from five aspects: network scale, network tightness, trust and commitment, social atmosphere and sense of belonging, and social participation. These five aspects are the channels for farmers to obtain information. A binary logistic model was used to analyze the impact of the social network relationships on farmers’ participation in small water-saving irrigation and water conservancy facilities supply, and the key factors affecting farmers’ behavior were selected. The purpose of this study is to further improve the evaluation system of social network relationships and the study of the effect of social network relationships on farmers’ water-saving behaviors, enrich relevant theories and provide a feasible path for the implementation of water-saving irrigation from the macro initiative level. The results show that higher network closeness and policy satisfaction, water management experience, agricultural insurance, strong family decision-making power, etc., will reduce the likelihood of farmers participating in the supply of small water-saving irrigation and water conservancy facilities; increasing network compactness will increase the possibility of farmers’ participation in the supply; trust and commitment, social ethos and sense of belonging, social participation, and other factors have no significant influence on farmer participation behavior. It can be seen that network tightness and network scale play an important role in the behavior of farmers’ participation in public affairs. In conclusion, social network relationships will affect farmers’ participation in the supply of irrigation and water conservancy facilities, but different dimensions have different influences on it.

Measuring livelihood resilience of farmers and diagnosing obstacle factors under the impact of COVID-19 in Jiangsu Province, China

“…This paper quantifies the self-organizational capacity of farm households in terms of 3 dimensions: social trust, social participation, and social networks. on the one hand, a close social network can help farming households identify potential livelihood risks and make rational management decisions (Wang and Zhao, 2023), and on the other hand, it can help farming households expand their risk management channels and improve risk prevention and control (Hou et al, 2022). For farm households, the higher the social trust, the more stable the social network; the higher the social participation, the broader the social network (Chen et al, 2021).…”

The Impact of Technical Training on Farmers Adopting Water-Saving Irrigation Technology: An Empirical Evidence from China

“…Existing literature (such as Tian et al [44], Yang et al [45] and Bakhshi et al [46]) highlighted the potential risk of the improper application of water-saving irrigation technology and found that there are dual attributes of knowledge-intensive and capital-intensive at play, which requires high-quality knowledge of the subject of technology adoption. When farmers have a relative deprivition of risk regarding the technical know-how of new technology, they are more likely to avoid it [47,48]. Therefore, it can be argued that the higher the degree of risk aversion of farmers, the lower the framer's enthusiasm for water-saving irrigation technology, which eventually hinders the adoption rate.…”

Preface to the Special Issue “Agricultural Environmental Pollution, Risk Assessment, and Control”

“…Furthermore, in the fourteenth article, Signorelli et al [14] applied a quality-specific environmental risk index to understand pollution-impacted hive locations. The fifteenth article highlighted that social network participation plays an important role in improving farmers' participation in irrigation water-saving system management in China [15]. The sixteenth article showed that irrigation with industrial wastewater could introduce toxic metalloids into the edible parts of rice crops grown in urban areas [16].…”