Search Results (2)

Farmers’ adoption of water-saving irrigation technology (WSIT) is essential for achieving high-quality agricultural development. An in-depth analysis of the impact of risk aversion, technical training and their interaction on farmers’ adoption of WSIT will help the government to promote WSIT to facilitate agricultural resource conservation and sustainable development. The study takes 707 farmers who grow watermelons and muskmelon in Yuncheng and Xian City of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces as the research object to analyse the influence of risk aversion and technical training and their interaction terms on farmers’ WSIT adoption behaviour. The study uses the Probit and moderating effect models to outline the findings. The empirical analysis reveals the following outcomes: (i) 27.44% of the sample farmers adopt water-saving irrigation technology, indicating that the current adoption rate and the enthusiasm for adoption are relatively low; (ii) risk aversion has a significant negative impact on farmers’ adoption of WSIT; (iii) both online and offline technical training have a significant positive impact on farmers’ adoption of WSIT; (iv) significant group differences exist in the effects of risk aversion, online technical training, offline technical training and interaction items on farmers’ WSIT adoption behaviour. Therefore, the study proposes to strengthen the role of technical training in the diffusion of WSIT and implement differentiated technical training for different types of farmers to reduce the degree of risk aversion of farmers. Full article

Potato crops are one of the main sources of income for farmers living in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. Given the high sensitivity of potatoes to water stress, water shortages can cause considerable losses in terms of potato yield and quality. To overcome this challenge, the use of water-saving technologies such as micro-irrigation systems are very important. However, the adoption of this technique remains quite low among potato farmers in the Bekaa region, who still use ordinary sprinkler systems. In this study, the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) serves as the conceptual framework for investigating these farmers’ behaviour in adopting a new micro-irrigation system. To achieve this objective, we extended the UTAUT model by considering farmers’ risk perception of the use of a new micro-irrigation technology. The moderators tested were age, previous experience, voluntariness of use, gross unit margin and educational level. Examining the standard regression coefficients, i.e., the β weights, the results indicate that performance expectancy raised behavioural intention for investment in micro-irrigation (β = 0.29) while for effort expectancy the β weight value was 0.24. Overall, an increase of 1 standard deviation of the behavioural intention strongly impacted investment in micro-irrigation systems, β = 0.8 standard deviation of the effective adoption of the technology. Risk perception (β = −0.08) negatively affected farmers’ performance expectancy, i.e., the higher the perceived risk, the lower the perceived performance of the investment, which in turn affected their intention to use micro-irrigation systems. Age (β = 0.11) exerted a significant effect on effort expectancy. Finally in this paper, the policy implications of the results are discussed. Full article