Risk attitude, risk perception, and farmers’ pesticide application behavior in China: A moderation and mediation model

Understanding farmers’ pesticide application behaviors is essential for environmental sustainability and food safety in China. Based on a nationally representative survey of 603 rice farmers from seven major rice-producing provinces in China, this paper constructs a moderation and mediation model to examine the causal relationship between risk attitudes, risk perceptions, and farmers’ pesticide application behaviors. The results show that risk-averse farmers are more likely to use more pesticides. Farmers’ perceptions of the risks posed by pesticides to profit-maximizing factors, namely food quality and human health, can decrease their pesticide expenditure, while their perceptions of risks to environmental factors, namely soil degradation, water pollution, and air pollution, are not significantly associated with their pesticide expenditure. Moreover, their perceptions of risks to food quality and human health can alleviate the positive effect of risk attitude on pesticide expenditure, and can also play a partial mediating role in the relationship between risk attitude and pesticide expenditure. Risk management tools such as crop insurance, and educational programs to improve farmers’ risk perception, would be beneficial policies to help alleviate farmers’ excessive pesticide use.