The impact of rural e-commerce participation on farmers' entrepreneurial behavior: Evidence based on CFPS data in China.

The "Three Rural Issues", encompass challenges related to agriculture, farmer, and rural area, which hold significant importance in driving comprehensive rural revitalization efforts in China. Farmer entrepreneurship, as a crucial means to enhance productivity, create job opportunities, and increase residents' income, has gradually become a key driving force in promoting rural revitalization in the new stage of development in China. With the rapid development of rural e-commerce, farmer entrepreneurship has encountered new opportunities. This study utilizes the 2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data and employs a structural equation model (SEM) to analyze the direct impact of rural e-commerce participation on farmer entrepreneurial behavior, considering factors such as human capital, social capital, and network infrastructure. This study further explores the indirect effects and mechanisms of e-commerce participation as a mediating variable and analyzes the impact and mechanisms on agricultural entrepreneurship behavior. The findings are as follows: (1) E-commerce participation significantly promotes farmer entrepreneurial behavior; (2) E-commerce participation as a mediating variable has a positive indirect effect on the relationship between social trust, network infrastructure, human capital, and farmer entrepreneurial behavior; (3) E-commerce participation has a significant positive influence on farmer entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector, and farmers with higher levels of network infrastructure and human capital have a higher probability of choosing agricultural entrepreneurship under the influence of e-commerce participation. Finally, this study provides policy recommendations in terms of infrastructure construction, entrepreneurial policy environment, and education level, aiming to optimize the situation of farmer entrepreneurship and contribute to the comprehensive promotion of rural revitalization.Overall, the research in this paper effectively combines theory and empirical evidence to outline the direct and indirect impact mechanisms of rural e-commerce participation on farmers' entrepreneurial behavior and agriculture-related entrepreneurial behavior and to test the effects of their impacts. First, most of the existing literature deals with farmers in individual sample areas, while the sample selected in this paper is farmers in the whole country, which is relatively more generalizable; second, most of the previous studies explore the level of e-commerce in the inter-provincial or county areas, while this paper expands the empirical study of rural e-commerce on the entrepreneurial behavior of farmers and the micro-period of agricultural entrepreneurial behavior, and focuses on the impacts of the e-commerce activities of farmers on their entrepreneurial behavior.

Uncovering the key factors influencing sustainable green production behavior among Chinese medicinal herb growers.

Promoting green production behavior among farmers is crucial for enhancing income, improving industrial efficiency, and ensuring ecological security. This study analyzes the determinants of green production behavior among farmers in Cheifeng, China, Using a binary logistic model on a sample of 860 microdata. The result of empirical analysis pointed out that the implementation rate of rural households was low at 54.5 %, highlighting the need for intervention. The results suggest that age, party members, total income, total area, irrigation conditions, market, policy, social factors, and knowledge transfer ability significantly influence green production behavior. Among these factors, age, party member, total area, irrigation conditions, and knowledge transfer ability have negative effects, while other factors positively affect green production. To promote green production behavior, this study recommends improving access to information, developing a training system, enhancing quality and safety information disclosure, establishing traceability mechanisms, and providing policy subsidies. This stud also highlights the need to strengthen publicity, technical guidance, and media persuasion for promoting the green production of Chinese medicinal materials.

Effects of climate change and grazing intensity on grassland productivity-A case study of Inner Mongolia, China.

In the last 30 years, grassland productivity has declined seriously due to climate variations and unreasonable human activities. Therefore, to analyze the impact of different factors on grassland productivity, we selected three grassland stations of the Typical Steppe from west to east and collected 38 years of data. The Pearson Correlation and Fixed Effect Model were used to analyze the impact of precipitation, temperature, and grazing intensity on grassland productivity. The empirical results show that precipitation positively and significantly affected grassland productivity. The effects of climate change are more significant than human activities, but the impact of temperature is greater than precipitation. The synergy between precipitation and temperature was greater than between precipitation and temperature separately. In addition, the effects of climate change and human activities on grassland productivity have evident regional heterogeneity. The variation trend gradually increases from west to east in factors that affect grassland productivity. Therefore, we suggest some implications for grassland risk management, such as utilizing some financial products for climate risk and focusing on the synergy index to design financial products, such as design weather derivatives. Lastly, we should strengthen the research on the relationship between climate change and grassland productivity to provide a scientific basis for revealing the intrinsic relationship between climate, human activities, and grassland productivity.

Promotion and sustainable development of beef cattle farming industry in agro-pasture ecotone areas, Inner Mongolia of China: A comparison between two fattening systems.

The agro-pasture ecotone is distributed all around the world. In these areas, the productive land forces are decreasing, and due to the irrational economic activities and the vulnerable ecological environment in these regions occurs land degradation. This study focuses on the effect of two different fattening approaches of beef cattle and output from the economic point of view by using a cost-benefit analysis technique in the eastern agro-pasture ecotone of Inner Mongolia, China. This study considers the environmental, social, and economic costs as input factors and concludes that both fattening systems have different characteristics. The result shows that the intensive farming system has more fluctuation and instability in terms of the number of animals due to the feed shortage in the local area. In comparison, the continuous fattening system is much more efficient and sustainable in terms of cost management and benefit analysis due to the local condition of the area. The empirical results indicate that the beef cattle industry has a high marginal return. Our research highlights the need to prioritize local resources and incorporate feed-intensity analysis in livestock.

An empirical study of the key factors affecting herders' purchasing decision on weather index insurance-A case study from inner Mongolia autonomous region, China.

The weather index insurance for mutton sheep (WIMS) is the first weather index insurance product that addresses the increased feeding cost-related risk of grassland animal husbandry herders in China. In 2019, the WIMS was implemented as a pilot project in 11 county regions of Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia, China. Since the implementation of this product, the purchasing rate has varied from region to region, as the highest purchasing rate was 84.3%, while the lowest was only 1.8%. This research uses the double hurdle model to identify the factors affecting herders' purchasing behavior. This paper reports a survey study of 535 participants herders in the Xilin Gol League. The result indicates that herders' age, disaster risk evaluation, insurance awareness, pasture area, and neighborhood purchasing decision significantly impact herders' purchasing propensity. Disaster evaluation, insurance awareness, pasture area and location significantly impact the purchasing degree of herders. The study suggests that young herders and herders with large pasture areas should be motivated to purchase insurance. In addition, new methods should be applied for the publicity of this insurance product; Investments should be focused on the automatic weather monitoring station projects in pastoral areas to reduce the basis risk of the insurance.

Measurement and identification of relative poverty level of pastoral areas: an analysis based on spatial layout.

Pastoral areas are the key difficulty in China's pursuit of common prosperity and a key region for China to build the northern ecological safety barrier and to realize the Two Centenary Goals. It is of great significance to scientifically evaluate the quality of rural life (QRL), measure the relative poverty level (RPL), and identify the relatively poor areas, making it possible to dock poverty elimination with rural revitalization. Based on the socio-economic data of 18 pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia, this paper draws on spatial layout theory to evaluate QRL and measures RPL by the natural breakpoint method and then identifies the relatively poor areas in Inner Mongolia. The results show that (1) the QRLs of pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia were unbalanced and highly polarized. The mean score of QRLs was 0.2598. Eleven (61.11%) of the counties/banners had a QRL smaller than the mean score. On the spatial layout of QRLs, the western areas were stronger than the central areas. High QRL counties/banners are mainly concentrated in the western region. In the central region, the QRLs were very fragmented, falling onto all five levels. (2) The pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia differed significantly in RPL. The mean score of RPL stood at 0.3788. Nine counties/banners (50%) had an RPL greater than the mean. Contrary to the spatial layout features of QRLs, the central pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia had stronger RPLs than the eastern ones. High RPL counties/banners are mostly clustered in the central region. The spatial layout of RPLs is relatively reasonable in the central region: the RPLs decreased gradually from Dorbod Banner. (3) Nearly 45% of the pastoral areas in central and western Inner Mongolia face serious relative poverty and a high risk of returning to poverty. Eight counties/banners (45%) were identified as high composite relative poverty areas. From spatial layout, the composite relatively poor counties/banners clustered clearly, mainly in the western region. Finally, this paper establishes a warning mechanism against large-scale returning to poverty, aiming to lower composite RPL. The research results provide empirical reference and implementation path for consolidating the results of poverty eradication and facilitating rural revitalization.