The Effect of Empowerment on the Adoption of Soil and Water Conservation Technology in the Loess Plateau of China

Abstract

Since there is a serious problem of land degradation and soil erosion in the Loess Plateau region of China, soil and water conservation technology (SWC) is necessary to protect land resources and reduce water loss, so as to promote the development of sustainable agriculture. By using the binary probit model, this study analyzes the effect of organizational, economic and self-empowerment on the adoption of soil and water conservation technology in the Loess Plateau region of China. The results indicated that all these empowerments have significant positive effects on the adoption of SWC, and there are significant gender differences in the impact. Organizational empowerment had a more significant impact on the adoption of SWC by male household heads, while economic empowerment and self-empowerment had a more significant effect on the adoption of SWC by female household heads. Therefore, more organizational and financial support for farmers is needed, and farmers themselves should have more confidence in the adoption of new technologies. Furthermore, given the gender differences in the impact, more gender equality should be ensured in the promotion of agricultural technologies.

1. Introduction

In recent years, the Loess Plateau region of China has faced serious problems of land degradation and soil erosion, which, together with unsustainable agricultural and land use practices, such as excessive farming, deforestation and soil erosion, have led to the occurrence of soil erosion, water pollution and ecosystem damage [1]. Therefore, it is crucial to use soil and water conservation techniques (SWC) to protect land resources and restore ecological balance. Practice shows that the adoption of SWC, such as terracing, vegetation cover, soil and water conservation forest belt, water-saving irrigation techniques and other measures, can not only slow down water flow and reduce its impact, so as to reduce water waste and loss and improve the efficiency of water resources utilization, but also protect biodiversity and maintain ecological balance. It is also beneficial to protect endangered species, preserve natural ecology such as forests, wetlands and rivers, and maintain the integrity and stability of ecosystems [2]. As the basic units of agricultural production, farmers are the direct adopters of SWC, and they are direct participants and beneficiaries of SWC. However, some farmers may have limited clarity regarding the practical benefits of adopting SWC because they lack awareness and understanding of these techniques, and they do not have sufficient financial resources or access to financing, so they may have less opportunities to obtain relevant technical training and expert guidance. As a result, farmer motivation to adopt SWC is not that high.

Empowerment refers to the process of enabling individuals or groups to gain resources, support, training or opportunities and so on, so that they can control their lives and make independent decisions. The aim of empowerment is to shift power dynamics and promote equitable participation, allowing individuals to overcome barriers and actively shape their lives and communities [3]. Empowerment has increasingly become an important factor that affects family decision-making. Empowered by the organization, farmers can gain opportunities to participate in formal or informal organizations such as cooperatives, so that they can get policy resources and services that are beneficial to accelerating their social capital accumulation and promoting the innovation of agricultural technologies [4]. Empowered with economic rights by family, one can have the right to manage household finances and get the support to participate in the labor market, which at the same time can contribute to the improvement of household income [5]. Empowered by oneself, people will have the confidence and courage to make decisions freely to address the internal and external risks faced by the household [6]. However, women are facing some constrains in the process of empowerment impact on technology information access and technology adoption. One possible reason is that women face a lack of resources such as land and capital, or their ability to adopt technology is limited by reasons such as agricultural tools or equipment being too bulky [7,8,9,10]. On the other hand, there are stereotypical views on gender according to the sociocultural norms that potentially lead to the lower recognition of women’s involvement in agricultural decision-making activities [11,12,13]. These factors prevent women from realizing their full potential in SWC, and therefore, they also face a higher risk of poverty [14].

Based on the background above, this study utilizes survey data from 1195 households in the Loess Plateau region in China to analyze the impact of different empowerment types on the adoption of SWC. Furthermore, we have explored the gender differences in these impacts. This not only contributes to eliminating various constraints and inequalities faced by women but also promotes gender equality and social justice. Additionally, it enriches the theoretical research on the influence of gender differences in achieving more inclusive agricultural technology adoption. The findings of this study provide decision-making references and empirical evidence for the government in the process of agricultural technology promotion and policy implementation.

The subsequent structure of the article is as follows: in the second part, we put forward our theoretical analysis and research hypotheses. Data sources and variable descriptions are provided in the third part. Part four contains the analysis of the empirical results, and part five gives the conclusions and implications for policymaking.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Theoretical Analysis and Research Hypothesis

Empowerment is intangible and cannot be observed directly, so some scholars have put forward some alternative indicators to measure it [15]. In the following sections of this part, we will analyze the impact of empowerment on the adoption of SWC, focusing on organizational empowerment (organizational training and promotion), economic empowerment (the power to manage finances) and individual empowerment (self-encouragement and self-confidence).

When it comes to organizational empowerment, it is considered that organizational promotion and training will enhance the level of technology adoption [16]. For example, agricultural insurance, agricultural technologies and ecological subsidies provided by the government are a kind of organizational empowerment to farmers. Furthermore, organizations such as companies provided a lot of chances for farmers by organizing related training or promotions. And farmers can also obtain skills and consulting services from experts [17]. These initiatives represent the empowerment from organizations that can bring more development opportunities and resources to farmers, leading them to be more inclined to seek effective resources for exploratory behaviors. This enhances a farmer’s decision-making creativity in adopting SWC [18].

As for economic empowerment, it mainly refers to the freedom of farmers to make payments in implementing a decision. As the leaders and promoters of family agricultural production activities, the economic empowerment of farmers mainly depends on whether they have financial power, which largely reflects the structural characteristics of the family [19]. As an illustration, when families have strong economic empowerment for women, the constraints on women are relatively loose. Women can independently choose and control family income to realize their personal wishes or preferences and have the decision-making and adjustment rights to adopt agricultural technology in order to cope with risks [20,21].

The adoption of SWC is not only related to organizational empowerment and economic empowerment; the role of self-empowerment should not be ignored. The farmers’ own confidence and their sense of value in participating in household decision-making will motivate them to make choices that are more aligned with their own preferences [6], which will impact their motivation in the adoption of agricultural technologies such as SWC. Therefore, we hypothesize that empowerment is significantly positively associated with the adoption of SWC. Specifically, the stronger the levels of organizational empowerment, economic empowerment and self-empowerment are, the higher the possibility of farmer adoption of SWC will be.

2.2. Data Resources

The data came from the survey of our research team. We conducted surveys in eight counties (or districts) in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia on the Loess Plateau in China in November 2019. The survey area covered 27 towns and 60 villages, and a total of with 1195 questionnaires were obtained. Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia are located in the central part of the Loess Plateau, which is characterized by a fragile natural environment, frequent and intense rainstorms, natural disasters and vegetation destruction. Additionally, these regions are relatively densely populated, and social factors such as land misuse and over-exploitation have caused serious soil erosion. Therefore, data obtained from these areas hold high research value.

The survey adopted a combination of representative survey, stratified sampling and simple random sampling. Initially, the representative survey method was used to select areas where the soil erosion is better controlled, including Yulin in Shaanxi, Qingyang in Gansu and Guyuan in Ningxia. Subsequently, a combination of stratified and random sampling was used to randomly select 2–3 counties in each city. Then, 3–6 villages were selected in each township in a stratified manner, and finally, about 20 households were randomly selected in each village for one-on-one interviews. The questionnaire of the survey covers information on main crop production, household’s income, planting information, disaster information, adoption of SWC, household’s population and social and economic characteristics. A total of 1254 questionnaires were distributed, and after removing samples with missing key information and inconsistent logic, 1195 valid samples were obtained, with an effective rate of 95.30%. The number of male-headed households among the respondents was 673 (56.3%), and that of female-headed households was 522 (43.6%).

2.3. Variables Measurement

2.3.1. Dependent Variable: The Adoption of SWC

SWC are technologies that integrate engineering measures (slope control, ditch control, sand control and water conservancy projects), biological measures (afforestation, grass planting) and tillage measures (furrow tillage, less tillage and no tillage) with the goal of protecting ecological and economic development [17]. We regard the binary variable “adoption of SWC” as the dependent variable. If a household adopts any one or multiple of the three mentioned technologies, it is considered as adopting SWC technology and assigned a value of 1. If a household does not adopt any of the technologies, it is assigned a value of 0. As the primary actors in the adoption of SWC, farmers’ willingness to adopt is crucial for the quality of ecological development.

2.3.2. Independent Variable: Empowerment

In this paper, we measure farmers’ empowerment from three aspects; they are organizational empowerment, economic empowerment and self-empowerment, drawing specific measurement references from the research conducted by Jiang Xiuhua et al. [7] on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. More specifically, organizational empowerment is measured by the question “whether various types of organizations (such as cooperatives, village collectives, enterprises, etc.) conduct training or related technology promotion activities”. And we measured economic empowerment by asking “whether you have control over the money in your household”, indicating the control over family property. Self-empowerment is measured by the question “do you have confidence in handling major family affairs” in the questionnaire.

The more comprehensive the organizations are in providing training and promotion to farmers, the greater economic control power they have. The higher their self-affirmation and confidence in making important family decisions are, the greater the empowerment is. And the greater the empowerment is, the higher the probability of adopting SWC is.

2.3.3. Control Variables

To avoid interference from other factors that may affect the relationship between empowerment and the adoption of SWC, we selected six control variables, including individual characteristics of farmers (such as gender, age and education levels of the head of household), land endowment characteristics (such as land size) and household’s characteristics (such as whether they have credit and whether they have investment).

3. Results

3.1. Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Matrix Analysis

We conducted correlation matrix analysis and variance inflation factor (VIF) analysis to test whether the model has multicollinearity problems.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlation coefficient matrix of the main variables.

	Mean	Standard Deviation	The Adoption of SWC	Self-Empowerment	Economic Empowerment	Organizational Empowerment	VIF	Tolerance
The adoption of SWC	0.51	0.500	1
Self-empowerment	0.51	0.245	0.134 ***	1			0.914	1.094
Economic empowerment	0.34	0.626	0.084 **	0.108 ***	1		0.936	1.068
Organizational empowerment	0.58	0.595	0.105 ***	0.045	0.197 ***	1	0.878	1.139

Note: ** significant at the 5% level; *** significant at the 1% level; N = 1195; VIF means variance inflation factor, and it is a measure used to quantify the severity of multicollinearity in a regression analysis; tolerance value is used to measure the multicollinearity between variables.

presents the mean, standard deviation and Pearson correlation coefficient of the main research variables. From the variable correlation coefficient matrix, it can be seen that empowerment has a direct impact on the adoption of SWC. In addition, the correlation coefficients among the independent variables are all lower than 0.60; the eigenvalues of the independent variables are all non-zero; and the variance inflation factors (VIF) of the regression equation are all below 10, indicating that there is no apparent multicollinearity among the independent variables in this research. We will show empirical evidence in the following part to figure out the more precise conclusions.

3.2. Regression Analysis of the Impact of Empowerment on the Adoption of SWC

Table 2. Estimated results of the impact of empowerment on the adoption of SWC.

Variables	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Organizational empowerment		0.515 *** (0.1430)
Economic empowerment			0.510 *** (0.143)
Self-empowerment				0.517 *** (0.109)
Gender of household head	0.129 (0.348)	0.171 (0.35)	0.181(0.354)	0.487 (0.515)
Scale of cultivated land	0.026 ** (0.012)	0.026 ** (0.012)	0.024 ** (0.012)	0.042 * (0.023)
Has credit or not	0.674 *** (0.01)	0.636 ** (0.235)	0.667 *** (0.157)	0.617 ** (0.239)
Age of household head	−0.019 *** (0.007)	−0.020 *** (0.007)	−0.020 *** (0.007)	−0.016 (0.010)
Education of household head	0.049 *** (0.018)	0.049 *** (0.018)	0.050 *** (0.018)	0.072 ** (0.033)
Has investment or not	0.318 ** (0.135)	0.328 ** (0.135)	0.322 ** (0.136)	0.498 ** (0.232)
Constant	0.921 * (0.570)	0.868 * (0.512)	0.721 (0.530)	0.520 (0.86)
R-sq	0.052	0.072	0.066	0.045
Prob > chi2	0.000	0.001	0.000	0.001

Note: * Significant at the 10% level; ** significant at the 5% level; *** significant at the 1% level; standard errors are in parentheses.

shows the regression result of the binary probit model. It can be seen from model 1 in Table 2 that education levels of the household head and the scale of the household cultivated land are significantly and positively associated with the adoption of SWC; and the families’ participation in investment and credit can significantly increase the possibility of the adoption of SWC.

It can be explained as follows:

Heads of households with higher levels of education generally have better agricultural knowledge and skills, and they are more likely to have cognition of the benefits of the adoption of new technologies. Additionally, it is easier for them to accept and have a good application and management of new technologies. Educated household heads also have easier access to relevant training and technical support, enabling effective communication and collaboration with experts and institutions. This finding is consistent with the research of Salazar et al. [22] about the adoption of irrigation technology in Chile.

A larger scale of cultivated land means that the household have more resources and agricultural income, and a larger land area makes it easier to form large-scale agricultural operations. Agricultural profitability is crucial for large-scale farmers, and adopting SWC entails lower marginal costs and higher production benefits for them. Therefore, they have a higher willingness and motivation to adopt SWC. This finding is consistent with the study about the adoption of interrelated sustainable agricultural practices in smallholder systems in rural Tanzania, which was conducted by Kassie et al. [23].

Having access to available credit support can help farmers with financial issues. Credit can be used to purchase necessary equipment, seeds, fertilizers and other agricultural inputs, as well as to pay for training and consulting fees. Families with credit support are able to implement SWC more easily in order to derive long-term economic benefits from it. This finding is similar to the research of Grime Y [24]. In that study, credit access and agricultural technology adoption nexus in Ethiopia was researched.

Having a certain level of investment capacity means that households are able to bear the costs associated with adopting SWC, including purchasing equipment, implementing land management measures and conducting ongoing maintenance work. Farmers with investment capacity are more likely to allocate funds to the adoption of these technologies. Therefore, their agricultural production efficiency and sustainability will be improved, which is similar to the findings of Gao and Lu [25].

The age of the household head has a significant negative impact on technology adoption, indicating that older household heads may be more conservative and less receptive to new technologies, and they are more inclined to use traditional agricultural practices and express skepticism towards adopting new SWC. Additionally, the older farmers may have limited opportunities to encounter and learn about new technologies, and their awareness and willingness to adopt SWC will be restricted, which is similar to the research of Huang X et al. [26]. Furthermore, we found no significant correlation between the gender of the household head and the adoption of SWC.

Then, we added the variable of organizational empowerment, economic empowerment and self-empowerment in model 2, model 3 and model 4 in Table 2, respectively. The results indicate that all these three types of empowerments have a significant positive effect on farmers’ adoption of SWC, which provides empirical support for our hypotheses. Based on the results, we can know that organizations can empower farmers through organizing activities—for example, participating in organizational activities will involve them in decision-making processes and planning conservation projects. They can play a crucial role in the implementation and management of these projects. Such organizational involvement increases farmers’ sense of ownership and responsibility, stimulating their motivation to adopt SWC. Additionally, when farmers have sufficient economic empowerment, they can make independent decisions and allocate agricultural investment funds, including the cost of adopting conservation technologies. Economic empowerment enables farmers to choose suitable technologies and have the freedom to purchase necessary equipment and material, and they will also be able to cover the costs of maintenance and management. Sufficient economic rights could enhance farmers’ willingness and ability to adopt SWC. Finally, self-empowerment means that farmers will have enough confidence in handling household affairs, which will also promote their adoption of SWC. When farmers possess knowledge and skills related to SWC, they will have a better understanding of the importance and benefits of it. This will strengthen their confidence and motivation to adopt new technologies and improve their capacity for technology application and management and enable them to adapt to diverse agricultural environments and requirements. These findings are similar to the study of Alex [3] on empowering women in agriculture in South India; the research of Walisinghe, B. R. et al. [27] on the topic of technology adoption in Sri Lanka; and the research of Doss [20] and Doss et al. [21] on the role of women in the agricultural field, as well as the study of Olajumoke et al. [6] on the influence of women’s agency on the adoption of agricultural technologies. In conclusion, these various forms of empowerment can promote the adoption of SWC and the sustainable development of agricultural production.

3.3. Gender Differences in the Impact of Empowerment on Soil and Water Conservation Technology Adoption

Gender has social, cultural, political and economic implications, and gender inequality has been persisting within nations, households and economic activities for a long time. The enduring presence of gender inequality in society has resulted in disparities between men and women in terms of organizational empowerment, economic empowerment and self-empowerment. It is important and meaningful to empower women and grant them power to actively participate in political and social affairs.

As shown in

Table 3. Estimated results of gender differences in the impact of empowerment on the adoption of SWC.

Variables	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
Organizational empowerment	0.673 * (0.381)
Economic empowerment		0.950 *** (0.083)
Self-empowerment			0715 ** (0.278)
Organizational empowerment * Gender of household head	0.493 ** (0.236)
Economic empowerment * Gender of household head		0.401 *** (0.084)
Self-empowerment * Gender of household head			0.230 ** (0.086)
Gender of household head	0.185 (0.309)	0.395 (0.347)	0.662 (0.499)
Scale of cultivated land	0.035 *** (0.01)	0.034 *** (0.01)	0.042 * (0.023)
Has credit or not	−0.098 (0.131)	0.667 *** (0.157)	0.609 ** (0.24)
Age of household head	0.001 (0.006)	−0.02 *** (0.007)	0.016 (0.01)
Education of household head	0.008 (0.02)	0.007 (0.020)	0.072 ** (0.033)
Has investment or not	0.144 (0.153)	0.158 (0.153)	−0.498 ** (0.232)
Constant	0.835 *** (0.646)	2.04 *** (0.709)	0.52 (0.86)
R-sq	0.028	0.066	0.052
Prob > chi2	0.000	0.000	0.000

Note: * Significant at the 10% level; ** significant at the 5% level; *** significant at the 1% level; standard errors are in parentheses.

, to analyze the gender differences in the impact of different empowerments on the adoption of SWC, we added interaction terms between organizational empowerment, economic empowerment and self-empowerment and the gender of the household head in model 1, model 2 and model 3, respectively. The results show that there are significant gender differences in the impact of different empowerments on the adoption of SWC. Specifically, the coefficient of influence of organizational empowerment on the adoption of SWC increased from 0.515 to 0.613 under the influence of gender, which indicates that the gender of the household head plays a role in the impact of organizational empowerment on the adoption of SWC. The possible reason is that men and women may have different opportunities to receive empowerment from organizations, and men are usually considered to participate more in the relevant activities organized by the organizations. The coefficients of the interaction terms for economic empowerment and self-empowerment with gender are also significant, indicating that there are also significant gender differences in the effect of economic empowerment and self-empowerment on the adoption of SWC. This is because there are differences in economic empowerment between men and women. On the one hand, men are always considered as the head of the household and have more rights to dominate the household property than women. On the other hand, men are usually more aggressive in their economic dispositions while women are considered more conservative. In addition, male and female household heads also make different decisions in the process of self-empowerment, which will influence the adoption of SWC. As proposed by Girma, G.G. et al. [28], there was a gender difference on technology adoption. They found that the intensity of adoption of improved maize varieties is lower for female-headed households where decisions are made jointly by men and women, compared to the male-headed households where decisions are made jointly.

3.4. Heterogeneity Analysis

Compared to male household heads, female household heads are more likely to be constrained by factors such as financial resources, information and resource allocation. One important mechanism of why empowerment affects the probability of the adoption of SWC is that empowerment alleviates the constraints of financial resources and information related to technology adoption. Therefore, we infer that the impact of different forms of empowerment on the adoption of SWC varies across gender groups [8].

In

Table 4. Estimated results of gender heterogeneity analysis.

	The Adoption of SWC
	Male Household Head (N = 673)	Female Household Head (N = 522)	Male Household Head (N = 673)	Female Household Head (N = 522)	Male Household Head (N = 673)	Female Household Head (N = 522)
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
Organizational empowerment	0.754 * (0.840)	0.660 (0.156)
Economic empowerment			0.393 *** (0.118)	0.967 *** (0.242)
Self-empowerment					0.603 *** (0.276)	0.637 ** (0.316)
Control variables	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Constant	1.928 *** (0.648)	1.901 *** (0.661)	2.04 *** (0.709)	2.029 ** (0.865)	1.912 *** (0.654)	0.921 * (0.570)
Pseudo R2	0.051	0.075	0.083	0.029	0.035	0.071
Empirical p-value 1	0.001 ***		0.013 **		0.001 ***

Note: * Significant at the 10% level; ** significant at the 5% level; *** significant at the 1% level; standard errors are in parentheses.

, we divided all the samples into two categories, i.e., male household heads and female household heads. We conducted separate regression analyses for these two groups and did a test of non-equivalence to validate our hypotheses. As listed in (1) to (6), the effect of organizational empowerment on technology adoption was greater for male household heads, while the effect of economic empowerment and self-empowerment on the adoption of SWC is stronger for female household heads. It indicates that male household heads are more likely to play a certain organizational role through frequent participation in agricultural extension and training activities, and they have a closer connection with technical experts and agricultural institutions. This will increase the ability and willingness of male household heads to adopt the new technology of SWC, which is also discussed in the research of Doss [20] and Doss et al. [21] about the role of women in agriculture. As for female household heads, the effect of economic empowerment and self-empowerment on the adoption of SWC is greater. When female household heads are economically empowered, they can decide and invest in SWC independently, and they will be more proactive in promoting the adoption of these technologies. Meanwhile, self-empowerment grants women greater confidence and abilities in decision-making in order to enhance their cognition and application abilities of SWC, thus promoting their adoption of these technologies [6].

Subsequently, we analyzed the heterogeneity of education 2. As we all know, the level of education is a fairly significant measure of an individual’s overall capabilities. Typically, those with higher levels of education have stronger abilities to accept and learn new things and have greater capacity to acquire new knowledge and information. They are more adept at efficiently allocating resources and making effective investments, as well as being better at self-motivation. As we can see from (1) to (6) in

Table 5. Estimated results of heterogeneity analysis of educational level.

	The Adoption of SWC
	High Education Level (N = 659)	Low Education Level (N = 536)	High Education Level (N = 659)	Low Education Level (N = 536)	High Education Level (N = 659)	Low Education Level (N = 536)
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
Organizational empowerment	0.987 *** (0.126)	0.945 *** (0.109)
Economic empowerment			0.476 *** (0.124)	0.358 *** (0.111)
Self-empowerment					0.270 ** (0.128)	0.209 * (0.116)
Control variables	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Constant	0.854 *** (0.108)	0.722 *** (0.090)	0.510 *** (0.106)	0.355 *** (0.096)	0.369 *** (0.112)	0.253 ** (0.102)
Pseudo R2	0.089	0.087	0.021	0.012	0.006	0.004
Empirical p-value	0.002 ***		0.016 **		0.001 ***

Note: * Significant at the 10% level; ** significant at the 5% level; *** significant at the 1% level; standard errors are in parentheses; the high education group refers to individuals with an education level higher than the mean level of the sample, while the low education group refers to individuals with an education level lower than the mean level of the sample.

, the impact of three empowerments on the adoption of SWC is different for groups with different education levels. Specifically, groups with higher levels of education demonstrate stronger effects in all three types of empowerments on the adoption of SWC than groups with lower levels of education. This suggests that those with higher educational level are more likely to obtain organizational empowerment, economic empowerment and self-empowerment, and they are more likely to increase their enthusiasm for adopting new technologies.

3.5. Robustness Analysis

To enhance the reliability of the research findings, we followed the work of Zhu et al. [29] using three alternative measurement indicators. Specifically, we took biological measures, engineering measures and tillage measures as dependent variables to test the robustness. As shown in

Table 6. Estimated results of the impact of empowerment on biological, engineering and tillage technologies.

Variables	BT	BT	BT	ET	ET	ET	TT	TT	TT
Organizational empowerment	0.706 ** (0.196)			0.420 *** (0.126)			0.551 *** (0.120)
Economic empowerment		0.561 ** (0.229)			0.344 ** (0.142)			0.401 *** (0.130)
Self-empowerment			0.535 *** (0.184)			0.497 *** (0.126)			0.236 * (0.123)
Control variables	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Constant	2.516 *** (0.656)	2.516 *** (0.204)	2.327 *** (0.130)	1.004 *** (0.095)	1.023 *** (0.122)	0.986 *** (0.083)	0.230 *** (0.085)	0.231 ** (0.108)	0.414 *** (0.076)
R-sq	0.023	0.011	0.014	0.013	0.007	0.018	0.024	0.011	0.004
Prob > chil2	0.000	0.001	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.001	0.000	0.000	0.000

Note: * Significant at the 10% level; ** significant at the 5% level; *** significant at the 1% level; standard errors are in parentheses; BT—biological technologies, TT—tillage technologies, ET—engineering technologies.

, the estimated results are generally similar to the results in Table 2 in terms of direction of impact and significance level. It can be seen that the impact of empowerment on other types of agricultural conservation technologies is consistent with the impact of empowerment on SWC, indicating that the estimated results are relatively robust.

Empowerment has a significant positive impact on the adoption of SWC because it enables farmers to have a better understanding of the value and potential benefits of adopting these technologies, so their enthusiasm for technology adoption will be inspired. Empowerment can stimulate the farmers’ initiatives and sense of responsibility. When farmers feel that they have power and responsibility in the decision-making (which refers to self-empowerment), they are more motivated to adopt conservation technologies and participate in its implementation actively. At the same time, empowerment can help farmers overcome barriers of funding and resources (which refers to economic empowerment), enabling them to feel free and easily control the finances, land and labor, which is required for the adoption of conservation agriculture technologies such as SWC. Moreover, formal organizations such as the government and non-governmental organizations such as cooperatives empower farmers by providing a learning platform, technical promotion and guidance, etc. Therefore, farmers can have a better cognition of its benefits and risks as well as the cost, and they will also know the specific usage methods and maintenance points of technologies, etc. Hence, organizational empowerment can help farmers adopt and apply SWC [30].

Additionally, there are significant gender differences in the impact of the three different types of empowerments on the adoption of SWC. Looking at the subgroups, the effect of organizational empowerment on technology adoption was greater for male household heads. Compared to men, self-empowerment and economic empowerment play a crucial role in enhancing the decision-making, resource control and technological application abilities of female household heads. Thus, when promoting and developing agricultural conservation technologies, it is important to fully consider the differences between different types of empowerments among men and women. This can facilitate a broader adoption of these technologies, ultimately enhancing the sustainability of agriculture and the protection of the ecological environment [31]. Furthermore, there are differences in the impact of the three types of empowerments on the adoption of SWC between the high-educated group and low-educated group. Those with higher education are more likely to have their adoption of these technologies influenced by empowerment. Therefore, the issue of farmers’ education should not be ignored. And it is beneficial to promote the conservation agricultural technologies by providing more widespread educational opportunities and reducing related barriers.

4. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

4.1. Conclusions

By analyzing 1195 micro-survey data collected from three provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia in the loess plateau of China, this study analyzes the effect of empowerment on the adoption of soil and water conservation technology (SWC). The results are as follows: organizational empowerment, economic empowerment and self-empowerment do have significant positive effects on the adoption of SWC, and there are significant gender differences in the impact. The heterogeneity analysis showed that organizational empowerment has a more significant impact on the adoption of SWC by male household heads, while economic empowerment and self-empowerment had a more significant effect on the adoption of SWC by female household heads. Then a sub-sample regression was performed according to the level of education, and it showed that the three kinds of empowerment have a greater impact on the adoption of SWC by groups with higher education levels. In addition, the age of the household head was significantly negatively correlated with the adoption of SWC; education levels of the household head and the size of the household arable land were significantly and positively associated with the adoption of SWC; and household participation in investment and credit could significantly increase the possibility of the adoption of SWC compared to non-participation in investment and credit.

4.2. Policy Recommendations

First, it is important to create and maintain an equal environment. Gender factors should be fully considered in the process of promoting and implementing agricultural technologies. The value of gender in the adoption of agricultural technologies should be fully recognized and affirmed. Integrating gender-friendly concepts into the social service system of agricultural technology dissemination could help to narrow the gender gap in technology adoption. Additionally, necessary policies should be secured to maintain a gender-equal social environment.

Second, adequate empowerment should be guaranteed. It is necessary to strengthen the construction of organizations related to the promotion of agricultural technology and build a comprehensive training system. We should focus on farmers’ needs, demands and constraints when empowering and provide enough opportunities for them to participate in organizational activities, training and learning. In addition, special attention should be paid to women’s participation in organizations, and equal opportunities ought to be provided to mobilize their enthusiasm of participation.

Then, financial institutions should provide farmers with sufficient credit support to promote their investment in the adoption of agricultural technology. At the same time, attention should be paid to women’s needs in terms of funding, and they need more trust and support. Furthermore, women’s decision-making in family affairs is critical, so families should give women the right to freely arrange the economy so as to help them make family decisions. Success begins with self-affirmation; self-confidence can promote the use of new technology, and farmers should have enough confidence in their decision to adopt new technologies. By participating in more training, seeking advice from others and acquiring relevant knowledge from various channels, farmers can gain a comprehensive understanding of new technologies, and this will help build greater confidence.

Finally, more educational opportunities should be provided. This can improve the comprehensive ability of farmers, which will benefit the promotion of agricultural conservation technologies in turn.