Technical perception, environmental awareness and adoption willingness of agricultural cleaner production technology

The popularization and adoption of agricultural cleaner production technology are critical for sustainable agricultural development in China. Most studies have only included technical perception variables or environmental cognitive variables as the many explanatory variables failing to include technical awareness variables or environmental cognitive variables in the analytical framework to analyze the key factors that affect farmers' willingness to adopt agricultural cleaner production technology. In fact, technical perception and environmental cognition play an important role in the adoption of agricultural cleaner production technology. Thus, this study analyzed the willingness of farmers to adopt agricultural cleaner production technology from points of views of both technical perception and environmental cognition based on survey data on 836 micro-farmers in 11 provinces in China. The effects of adopting agricultural cleaner production technology and differences among various peasant groups were also investigated through the use of binary logistic regression model. The results showed that:1) when farmers' perception of agricultural cleaner production technology reduced by one level, the probability of adoption of the agricultural cleaner production technology dropped by 5.93%. Farmers had a higher degree of awareness of the use of agricultural cleaner production technologies. Production techniques were more readily adopted among agricul-tural cleaner production technologies. When the farmers' perception on environmental change improved by one level, the willingness to adopt increased by 12.57%. It was obvious that farmers were more sensitive to climate change and were more likely to adopt the agri-cultural cleaner production techniques. 2) The key factor that affected farmers who perceived "ease of use" was the feel of environmental changes. Also the adoption willingness of farmers who was "technical perception of difficult" was mainly influenced by the perception on environmental changes and the usefulness of changes. It suggested that raising the level of perception of peasant households on envi-ronmental change significantly promoted the willingness to adopt cleaner agricultural production technology. 3) The key factor that in-fluenced the adoption willingness of farmers who was "sensitive to environmental change" was the ease-to-use of technology. Also for farmers who were "lagged to environmental change", the willingness was mainly affected by age, education level, family labor size and cultivated land area. The adoption processes of agricultural cleaner production technology still relied on traditional habits. There were obvious differences in the willingness of farmers in different sample groups. The research conclusions provided the critical references for agricultural cleaner production in China. Based on the results, in order to improve the level of technical knowledge, farmers' environmental cognition, popularization and application of agricultural cleaner production technology, there was the needs to target edu-cation. This should be done for different types of farmers in order to increase the degree of technical understanding and environmental awareness of farmers. This was necessary to promote the application of agricultural cleaner production technologies in China.