Search

With the raising awareness of environmental protection, straw burning ban has been implemented to control straw burning phenomenon in China. It has received significant achievement by reducing the fire spots remarkably, but fire spots still cannot be eliminated in farmland. Although considerable papers and reviews on straw burning have been conducted, there is still a lack of comprehensive and systematic review of exploring the status, obstacles, implications, and motivations of this phenomenon, especially revealing the unique circumstance and experience in China. The review first summarizes the reasons as well as hazards of straw burning in China, and then explores the dilemma of straw burning ban in terms of farmers' endowments. And then, the review discusses the limitations of subsidy from financial expenditure and suggests two alternative innovative incentives: transferred payment from stakeholders and carbon trading. It is hoped that policy suggestion about straw burning and innovative incentives can enlighten researchers and policymakers who intend to implement straw burning ban effectively in the future.

CONTEXT Farmers' decision-making related to the use of winter fallow fields is an issue of great concern to policymakers in China. An improved agricultural system, the rice-green manure rotation system (RGRS), has attracted more and more attention because of its efficient utilization of these fields and its outstanding comprehensive benefits. Despite the government's growing promotion, unfortunately low adoption has been observed among farmers. OBJECTIVE In this case, exploring the factors that affect farmers' adoption of RGRS has become the key to crack the above dilemma. METHODS This study therefore aims to reveal the factors determining farmers' intention and behavior to adopt RGRS by extending the theory of planned behavior (TPB) based on 1217 samples collected in the southern paddy field region (SPR) of China. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Results firstly validated the applicability of the extended TPB framework in analyzing farmers' intention and behavior to adopt RGRS. Subsequently, we found that farmers' intention to adopt RGRS can be greatly influenced by the perceived behavioral control, especially the control beliefs with regard to capital restriction and the expected environmental benefits of RGRS. Therefore, supportive policies should be formulated to improve farmers' behavioral capacity and, specialized training should be organized to improve their expected environmental benefits. Subjective norm, especially those derived from interpersonal relationships, emerged as another pivotal independent predictor of farmers' intention to adopt RGRS. This observation provides policy makers with enlightenment that strengthening the interpersonal social network is highly valued to improve farmers' adoption intention. Another finding is that there was a highly positive consistency between farmers' intention and behavior to adopt RGRS, which provides a possibility to predict, strengthen and test farmers' behavior based on their intention. More importantly, the comparison between the estimation results of the extended model and the original model shows that eco-compensation significantly increased the probability of intention being converted into behavior by moderating the influence intensity of perceived behavioral control on intention. SIGNIFICANCE These results can help policy makers better understand which influence farmers' adoption of RGRS and what targeted measures can be taken to popularize the improved agricultural system.

The Green Manure Planting Program (GMP), which is a typical case of payment for farmland ecosystem services, has come into play on conserving paddy fields in China. This paper analyses farmers’ willingness to accept (WTA) for adopting GMP by employing the contingent valuation method (CVM) and Double-hurdle (D-H) model on the basis of a sample data set containing information on 1217 farmers in five provinces in southern paddy fields region (SPF) of China. The results show that farmers’ WTA for adopting GMP was 3323 CNY/ha per year, which is much higher than the current compensation standards (com-standards) in the study region. This result explains why the current policy does invalidly stimulate farmers for adopting GMP. Farmers’ WTA is not only influenced by the cost-benefit effect of GMP adoption, but also impacted by their perceived environmental value in improving the quality of paddy fields as well as the demographic and socioeconomic information such as farmers’ age, political identities, income and paddy field area. It is costly if the government compensates all farmers who adopt GMP, letting farmers aware of more environmental value of GMP and maximally promoting the transformation of these environmental values into economic benefits is an effective measure to encourage them to adopt GMP.The results of this study can guide policy makers in determining the budget for GMP compensation and designing systematic compensation mechanism hence improve the sustainability of paddy fields conservation.