Search

Rural e-commerce has achieved an effective interface between rural specialty industries and large markets. This paper explores the impact of rural e-commerce on the income levels of potato farmers based on field survey data. In addition, the extent of the impact of rural e-commerce on the income levels of potato farmers in the participating and non-participating groups was further explored under the counterfactual assumption. The main findings are as follows. (1) Rural e-commerce can increase the income of potato farmers. Participation in rural e-commerce can increase farmers' income in both the participating and non-participating groups. If the participating group had not previously sold potatoes through rural e-commerce, their per capita household income would have been reduced by 27.22%. Similarly, if the non-participating group had sold potatoes through the rural e-commerce platform, their per capita household income would have increased by 36.35%. (2) Under the counterfactual assumption, the impact of rural e-commerce on the incomes of farmers who have not yet sold potatoes through e-commerce platforms is more profound. The marginal income increasing effect of rural e-commerce is currently at an incremental stage, and selling potatoes through an e-commerce platform can lead to higher returns for farmers. (3) Gender, farm household differentiation, self-employment experience, arable land area, position in village and whether participating in agricultural associations or cooperatives are important factors that simultaneously influence farmers' e-commerce participation decisions and income levels. Education and health level can influence farmers' e-commerce participation decisions. Age, farming years, dependency ratio and accessibility to irrigation can influence farmers' income level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crop-livestock integration model is the main path for the sustainable development of agriculture and animal husbandry in China, and farmers' participation behavior is critical to the formation of this model. So this paper based on a field survey data of 615 farmers in 10 pilot counties of Crop-Livestock Integration (CLI) in the dairy industry in the east, middle, and west of Inner Mongolia, the relationship among transaction costs, farmers' decision-making of participating in the CLI model, and income effects was analyzed using the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model in this paper. The results show that under the current market environment, the proportion of farmers participating in the CLI model is 37.56% of the farmer surveyed. The high costs of information searching, negotiation, and execution are the critical factors to inhibit farmers from participating in the CLI model. The results of the counterfactual test of the ESR model show that the effect of the CLI model on the income of participated farmers is not noticeable, while the effect is more significant on the income of non-participating farmers. Moreover, there is no obvious heterogeneity in the effects of the farmer level and "farmers-to-farm" level CLI models on farmers' income. Based on these conclusions, this paper proposes that the government should actively promote the establishment of the information-sharing platform and training mechanism about the CLI model, reduce farmers' costs in information searching and negotiation, optimize the incentive policy of the CLI model, incorporate the farmers planting forage into the subsidy scope of the CLI model, improve the economic benefits of farmers participating in the CLI model, and stimulate the enthusiasm of farmers participating in the CLI model, so as to effectively promote the realization of the CLI model in the animal husbandry industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family farms and agricultural cooperatives play important roles in modern agriculture in many countries. Different from smallholder farms in scale, family farms have been designated as the predominant unit of farming in China in the recent decade. However, studies on the relationship between cooperatives and family farms' income have been less frequent. Using survey data of 769 planting family farms in China, and employing the endogenous switching regression model, we examine the impact of cooperative membership on family farms' operating income (including total and per capita income). The empirical results show that, after controlling for the selection bias, cooperative membership exerts a positive and significant impact on family farms' income. And the income increase of non-member family farms if they had participated in cooperatives is much higher than that of family farms who are already members of cooperatives. Moreover, family farms that are common members of cooperatives, obtaining more centralized services and engaging in grain crop farming, would benefit more from cooperative membership. Technology-related service, marketing and information are critical pathways via which cooperative membership would increase family farms' income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is vital to evaluate the effects of China's farmland certification programme on farmers' economic welfare and clarify the impact mechanism. This paper uses the China Labour Dynamics Survey (2014, 2016),1 building endogenous switching regression and endogenous switching probit models to test the impact of the farmland certification programme on farmers' net agricultural income and poverty status after correcting for endogeneity. A robustness analysis is conducted applying instrumental variable and propensity score matching methods. The results indicate that the farmland certification programme can significantly increase farmer households' economic welfare, including an 83.10% improvement in agricultural net income and a 3.17% reduction in poverty. Farmland certification also prompts farmers to allocate more resources to agriculture and reduces poverty by increasing farmers' agricultural income. This study presents a constructive evaluation of the performance of China's farmland certification policy, providing a strong theoretical and empirical foundation and a useful policy reference for consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation and effectively linking rural revitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the background of urbanization, rural hollowing out, and aging, it is increasingly urgent to solve the problem of "who will farm the land" to stabilize the foundation of national food security. The socialized agricultural machinery service undoubtedly provides a feasible solution. From the perspective of land productivity, and based on field survey data from 597 farmers in four major wheat-producing provinces in China, this study applied an endogenous switching regression model. By constructing a "counterfactual" analysis framework, this paper's empirical analysis showed that the socialized agricultural machinery service had a positive impact on the land productivity of wheat production. At the same time, the impact of socialized agricultural machinery services on land productivity was heterogeneous due to the differences in planting scale, terrain, and concurrent business. It can give full play to the positive influence of socialized agricultural machinery services on stable grain yields and increases. It is necessary to guide and support the effective supply of socialized agricultural machinery services in the key links of food production, and to reasonably guide the main providers of socialized agricultural machinery service to provide high-quality services that meet the production needs of small farmers according to local conditions, so as to promote the organic connection between small farmers and the development of modern agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of emphasizing on the food production, clean air guarding and sustainable development of agriculture, straw returning practices have been widely promoted, however, most studies have not linked straw returning adoption and smallholder's agricultural income in double-season rice cropping system. Based on a face-to-face survey data from 797 farmers in Jianghan Plain, Central China, we filled this gap by using the endogenous switching regression model to estimate the impact of farmer's straw returning on their agricultural income. The evidences show number of family laborers and technical training are the main factors influencing farmers' adoption of SR. After controlling for self-selection and unobservable bias, the adoption of straw return technology reduces the farmers' agricultural income by 10.16%. Finally, suggestions such as strengthening the straw returning supporting facility construction, enhancing the straw returning training system, and establishing straw returning adoption subsidy are highly recommended., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest All authors declare that there are no financial or personal relationships that may be perceived as influencing this work., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

The adoption of organic fertilizers is crucial for improving sustainable agricultural development in China. Digital agricultural extensions offer personalized guidance to farmers, delivering these services more cost-effectively and rapidly. This paper, conducted in Shaanxi Province with a total of 495 kiwifruit farmers, employs an endogenous switching regression model to empirically examine the influence of digital agricultural extensions on the purchasing behaviors associated with organic fertilizers. The findings reveal three key insights. First, digital agricultural extensions significantly boost the likelihood of farmers purchasing organic fertilizers. Second, public welfare digital extensions have a more pronounced effect on these purchasing behaviors compared to those driven by profit motives. Finally, digital agriculture extensions facilitate organic fertilizer adoption by enhancing ecological literacy and broadening information channels. Based on these findings, the government is recommended to robustly support digital agricultural extensions, develop a supply system prioritizing public welfare with profit-driven approaches as supplementary, to encourage the adoption of organic fertilizers., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The modernization of agriculture in China has begun to take shape, but some groups of farmers still have relatively weak access to welfare and live in poverty, which is closely related to national food security and sustainable agricultural development. Based on survey data from northeastern China, this study analyzes the logical framework of "Agricultural Productive Services (APS) Embedded—Farmers' Family Economic Welfare Enhancement" by the endogenous switching regression model. The main findings are as follows. First, the purchase of APS brings a significant positive impact on farmers' family economic welfare improvement, mainly through the income effect and the substitution effect. Second, with the income effect, there are significant differences in the strength of the "pulling power" of different forms of APS for farmers' family economic welfare. Compared with farmers who purchase APS for the entire production chain, farmers who purchase only some of the services are more likely to increase their welfare in the later stages. Third, with the substitution effect, the re-employment behavior of the rural surplus laborers who are "squeezed out" under the embedding of APS is promoted, which makes farmers' income channels, income types, and income opportunities diversify, and their welfare will be more obviously strengthened after purchasing services. In order to enhance farmers' welfare more efficiently and meet their needs for a better life, this study suggests a combination of farmer information archiving and labor market information transparency to reduce service risks, expand employment channels, and enhance the effectiveness of the linkage between farmers and service providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People's weak perceptions of environmental pollution (PEP) threaten the achievement of the Global Sustainable Goals, especially in rural areas. However, Internet use may improve farmer's PEP. Thus, based on survey data from rural China, this study uses an endogenous switching regression model (ESRM) to remove the selection bias and quantitatively evaluate the impact of Internet use on the farmers' PEP. The results of this study show that (1) for group of farmers using the Internet, if they do not use the Internet, their PEP may decrease by 91.004% and (2) for group of farmers not using the Internet, if they use the Internet, their PEP may increase by 100.160%. These results provide the evidence for developing countries aiming to improve their residents' PEP and provide a new path for solving the problem of global environmental pollution and realizing sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although reducing poverty has become an important issue for rural development in China, few studies have analyzed the role of mobile Internet use in multidimensional poverty. To fill this gap, this study investigated the impact of mobile Internet use on multidimensional poverty, using data collected from a household survey in rural China. Because households generally decide whether to use mobile Internet by themselves, an endogenous switching regression model was employed to control for potential selection bias. In total, 9.63% of the households were identified as multidimensionally poor and the adjusted multidimensional poverty incidence was 5.47%. The results also showed that mobile Internet use has a significant negative impact on multidimensional poverty. Further, we provide evidence of heterogeneity in the effect of mobile Internet use across regions. These findings highlight the importance of mobile Internet use in multidimensional poverty reduction strategies for rural households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Food traceability system exerts a significant inhibitory effect on the overuse of antibiotics by farmers; • Inhibitory effects of food traceability system on over-the-counter and broad-spectrum antibiotics are more significant than those on prescription and narrow-spectrum antibiotics. • Inhibition effect of food traceability system on the overuse of antibiotics by different scale farmers exhibits an approximately inverse-U curvilinear relationship. • Intervention mechanism of the FTS on the overuse of antibiotics by farmers mainly consists of social reputation maintenance, liability traceability for antibiotic residues, and biosafety enhancement. The use of animal antibiotics is a double-edged sword. It can be used for disease treatment, health protection, and growth promoters. It also creates antibiotic residues and resistance, poses risks, and damages food safety, ecosystems, and public health. Under the pressure of disease risk and expected losses, farmers' overuse of animal antibiotics exacerbates this dual objective incompatibility. In this study, we employ the endogenous switching regression (ESR) model and the mediating effect method to empirically analyze the inhibitory effect and intervention mechanism of the food traceability system (FTS) on reducing farmers' overuse of antibiotics by using the survey data of hog farmers from China. This paper measures the "dose" unit of antibiotics farmers use regarding cost and the active ingredients of antibiotics per kilogram of treated infected hogs. The study finds evidence that the FTS exerts a significant inhibitory effect on the overuse of antibiotics by farmers. The counterfactual hypothesis unveils that non-participation in the FTS by the involved farmers will increase the cost of antibiotics overuse by 0.080 yuan/kg, while if the farmers currently not participating are to engage with the FTS, the price will decrease by 0.126 yuan/kg. This effect persists across control variables controlled in turn and the unit doses of active ingredients of tetracycline, sulfonamides, β -lactam, chloramphenicol, and macrolide antibiotics. Moreover, our results reveal that the inhibitory effects of the FTS on over-the-counter and broad-spectrum antibiotics are more significant than on prescription and narrow-spectrum antibiotics. The results show that the inhibition effect of the FTS on the overuse of antibiotics by free-range, professional, and large-scale farmers exhibits an approximately inverse-U curvilinear relationship. Besides, the intervention mechanism of the FTS on the overuse of antibiotics by farmers mainly consists of social reputation maintenance, liability traceability for antibiotic residues, and biosafety enhancement, and the proportion of their mediating effects in the total impact are 24.22%, 21.84%, and 10.87%, respectively. Our empirical study has yielded several implications, such as strengthening the FTS construction, improving farmers' antibiotic use skills, promoting standardized breeding levels, and increasing the market premium for food products that adhere to antibiotic residue standards. These outcomes not only contribute to the improvement of livestock production safety but also reduce the problem of antibiotic overuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swine manure has become rural China's primary source of agricultural non-point pollution. Various sustainable manure management practices (SMMPs) have been promoted in rural areas. Although SMMPs are becoming more popular, little evidence exists regarding their ex-post impacts. Using survey data from 710 swine breeding households in rural Hubei, China, this paper estimates the adoption and impacts of SMMPs on household income and happiness. This paper discusses the use of an endogenous switching regression model to solve the endogeneity problem that arises from both observable and unobservable factors. The results showed that 48.5% of farmers sampled adopted SMMPs. Furthermore, on average, the adoption of SMMPs was associated with a 28.7% increase in household income per capita and a 22% improvement in happiness. Then robustness tests were conducted to verify these results. Several factors influence the adoption of SMMPs, including health, swine breeding scale, swine breeding experience, technical training, internet, waste management facility and previous adoption experience. These findings highlight the importance of promoting SMMPs in rural areas to increase farmer income and enhancing their perceived happiness, and measures should be taken to scale up their adoption of SMMPs. • Adoption of SMMPs positively influences swine breeding farmers' household income. • Adoption of SMMPs significantly enhances swine breeding farmers' happiness. • Less than half of the sampled swine breeding farmers adopted SMMPs. • Endogenous switching regression model is employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market sentiment has been playing a important role in Chinese housing market in last two decades, while has not received enough attentions in literature. With this in mind, this paper first establishes sentiment index depicting housing market sentiment in China. Then, the paper uses an endogenous switching regression model to investigate how housing price affects joint determination of housing choice and non-housing expenditure, with regard to the moderating role of market sentiment. This paper finds that the rising housing prices is negatively related to the probability of being an owner and positively associated with consumption. However, the counter-factual analysis the choice of being a owner has a negative effect on consumption over all and such an effect can be weakened by having a mortgage. A higher sentiment can improve the likelihood of home ownership and reduces non-housing consumption. This study helps households to optimize the wealth allocation and governments in their housing policy strategies and developers in their property development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unstable land tenure may hamper cleaner agricultural production in developing countries by discouraging farmers from adopting sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs). This study attempts to examine the impact of land tenure stability on farmers' adoption intensity of SAPs in agricultural production, using the data collected from banana farmers in China. The Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model is employed to address the self-selection bias of sample farmers. The results show that land tenure stability exerts a statistically significant and positive impact on farmers' adoption intensity of SAPs. Specifically, farmers who cultivate higher proportion of their own farmland are more inclined to use SAPs in banana production, and the higher stability of land use rights can increase farmers' adoption intensity of SAPs by 30.55% on average. The effect of land tenure stability on farmers' uptake of SAPs appears heterogeneous among farmers with different farmland sizes and in different regions. Further, a positive association between the use of SAPs and land productivity has been identified in banana farms of China. Our findings highlight the importance of secure land rental market for sustainable agriculture in developing countries, and more supporting programs are expected from policymakers to encourage farmers to adopt SAPs in farming practices. • Farmers' adoption intensity of SAPs can be increased by 30.55% when holding more stable land resource. • The estimation of marginal effect shows that adoption of SAPs can help farmers to increase banana yield by 15.3%. • The effect of land tenure stability on farmers' uptake of SAPs is heterogeneous among different farmers. • The Endogenous Switching Regression model is employed to address the self-selection bias of sample farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lack of adequate exercise threatens human health, weakening human capital accumulation. The relationship between exercise and income has become the focus of attention in health economics. In terms of reducing body weight and improving physical fitness, diet and physical exercise are intertwined and become effective ways to shape a healthy state. Based on individual-level survey data from China, this study quantified the economic returns of habitual exercise behavior by using an endogenous switching regression model (ESRM) to eliminate selection bias. The study shows that (1) participants in the group with regular exercise behavior increased their income by 3.79% compared with those not exercising regularly; (2) for the group with no regular exercise behavior, regular exercise increased their income by 13.36% compared with those not exercising regularly. Additionally, empirical evidence shows that both drinking and smoking can significantly increase individual income, despite unhealthy habits. These results suggest that the habit of regular physical activity plays a vital role in increasing individual income and improving overall national health, and the effect of individual behavior on income is affected by national culture. The outcomes are empirical evidence for the Chinese government to promote Healthy China Action and support developing countries worldwide to enable habitual exercise, stimulating a policy of exercise behavior.