Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241

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Journal of Cleaner Production

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Risk attitude, risk perception, and farmers’ pesticide application

behavior in China: A moderation and mediation model
Dan Pan a, Mimi He a, Fanbin Kong b, c, *
a
School of Economics, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, 330013, China
b
College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang A&F University, Zhejiang Province, 311300, China
c
Research Academy for Rural Revitalization of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang A&F University, Zhejiang Province 311300, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Understanding farmers’ pesticide application behaviors is essential for environmental sustainability and
Received 22 April 2020 food safety in China. Based on a nationally representative survey of 603 rice farmers from seven major
Received in revised form rice-producing provinces in China, this paper constructs a moderation and mediation model to examine
5 August 2020
the causal relationship between risk attitudes, risk perceptions, and farmers’ pesticide application be-
Accepted 14 September 2020
Available online 22 September 2020
haviors. 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
Handling Editor: Bin Chen health, can decrease their pesticide expenditure, while their perceptions of risks to environmental fac-
tors, namely soil degradation, water pollution, and air pollution, are not significantly associated with
Keywords: their pesticide expenditure. Moreover, their perceptions of risks to food quality and human health can
Risk attitude alleviate the positive effect of risk attitude on pesticide expenditure, and can also play a partial mediating
Risk perception role in the relationship between risk attitude and pesticide expenditure. Risk management tools such as
Pesticide application behavior crop insurance, and educational programs to improve farmers’ risk perception, would be beneficial
Moderating effect
policies to help alleviate farmers’ excessive pesticide use.
Mediating effect
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
China has been the world’s largest pesticide user for several
decades, and has experienced a sharp increase in pesticide appli-
cation (Sun et al., 2012). The intensity of pesticide application in
2017 was 9.95 kilos per hectare, which is 3.75 times larger than the
world average and 1.95 times higher than the amounts applied in
1991 in China (Fig. 1). However, not only has the high intensity of
pesticide application in China been shown to be a main contrib-
uting factor in agricultural non-point source pollution (Hu et al.,
2007), water quality degradation (Zhang et al., 2015), and effects
on human health (Lai, 2017), but it is also widely known to be
related to deteriorating food quality and safety (Zhao et al., 2018).
Estimates show that 0.2 million people meet with pesticide
poisoning accidents in China annually (Wang et al., 2017). The
Chinese government has responded to these concerns by imple-
menting a series of policies to reverse the growth in pesticide use,
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: pandan@jxufe.edu.cn (D. Pan), 13155835871@163.com
(M. He), kongfanbin@aliyun.com (F. Kong).
and it aims to achieve zero growth in pesticide use by 2020 (MOA,
2015). However, thus far, the effectiveness of these policies is not
very significant. Although the intensity of pesticide application has
been decreased slightly in recent years, it is still much higher than
the world average (see Fig. 1).
The above evidence poses a puzzle as to why farmers deviate
from profit-maximizing behavior by using excessive pesticides,
especially considering that decreasing pesticide application would
greatly reduce farmers’ production input costs, improve their in-
comes, and benefit their health and environment (Liu and Huang,
2013). Hence, a thorough understanding of farmers’ pesticide
application behavior is essential to ensure the success of any pol-
icies aiming to decrease pesticide overuse (Che ze et al., 2020).
Previous research has suggested that farmers’ pesticide appli-
cation behavior is mostly affected by observable characteristics:
individual characteristics, such as age (Wang et al., 2015), gender
(Wang et al., 2017), and education (Wu and Hou, 2012); household
characteristics, including off-farm employment (Zhang et al., 2019),
farm size (Wu et al., 2018), and cooperative membership (Zhou
et al., 2018); policy characteristics, including access to public
technical training (Huang et al., 2012), government subsidies (Fan

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124241
0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241

12
China World
10
（kilos per hectare）
Pesticide dosage
8

0
1994

1999

2004

2009

2013
1991
1992
1993

1995
1996
1997
1998

2000
2001
2002
2003

2005
2006
2007
2008

2010
2011
2012

2014
2015
2016
2017
Fig. 1. Change trend of pesticide use level in China and the world from 1991 to 2016
Data source: FAO STAT.

et al., 2015), and governmental regulations (Zhao et al., 2018).
However, less attention has been paid to the role of psychological
determinants, especially farmers’ risk attitudes and risk percep-
tions, in farmers’ pesticide application behavior (Wang et al., 2018).
Farmers’ risk attitudes are understood as psychological feelings,
and they can be divided into three categories: risk-averse (avoiding
any risk under any conditions), risk-neutral (indifferent to risk-
averse and risk-loving), and risk-loving (having a preference for
taking risks) (Pennings et al., 2002). Feder (1979) has pointed out in
theory that pesticide is a risk-reducing input in that it decreases the
production variance resulting from destructive pests. Hence, risk
attitude is the main driver of farmers’ pesticide application
behavior. Chen et al. (2013), Liu and Huang (2013) and Gong et al.
(2016) have found robust evidences to support the theory pro-
posed by Feder (1979), which shows that a risk-averse farmer is
more likely to use excessive pesticides.
Farmers’ risk perceptions refer to their perceptions of the like-
lihood of adverse effects to humans or the environment associated
with a specific phenomenon (Asravor, 2019). Certain studies have
come to the conclusion that farmers with a higher level of knowl-
edge about the negative consequences of pesticide overuse are
more likely to use smaller quantities of pesticides (Bagheri et al.,
2019; Chen et al., 2013).
However, while much of the existing literature has investigated
the impact of either risk attitude or risk perception on farmers’
pesticide application behavior, less attention has been paid to the
influence of both risk attitude and risk perception on farmers’
pesticide application behavior. In fact, as pointed out by Lopes
(1987) and Lusk and Coble (2005), an individual’s behavior de-
pends not just on their risk attitude, but also their risk perception.
The interaction between risk attitude and risk perception is a
dominant factor influencing human behavior. Furthermore, previ-
ous studies have considered the roles of risk attitude and risk
perception to be independent and direct, while very little research
has examined the moderation and mediation effects of risk
perception in the relationship between risk attitude and pesticide
application behavior. Indeed, as shown by Dessart et al. (2019),
there is a causal ordering from risk attitude to risk perception to
human behavior.
To address the two problems described above, this paper con-
structs a moderation and mediation model to examine the causal
relationship between risk attitude, risk perception, and farmers’
pesticide application behavior. Specifically, the study addresses
2
three questions:
i. What is the impact of risk attitude and risk perception on
farmers’ pesticide application behavior?
ii. Can risk perception moderate the relationship between
farmers’ risk attitudes and pesticide application behavior?
iii. Can risk attitude impact farmers’ pesticide application
behavior via risk perception?
This study aims to make two contributions to the current liter-
ature. First, we implemented a joint analysis framework to inves-
tigate both risk attitude and risk perception on farmers’ pesticide
application behavior, rather than solely focusing on the impact of
either risk attitude or risk perception. Second, we examined the
moderation and mediation effects of risk perception in the rela-
tionship between risk attitude and pesticide application behavior
based on a moderation and mediation model. Our findings may
provide valuable suggestions for the Chinese government to reduce
pesticide dosage, and may also benefit other countries in relation to
sustainable agricultural development.
Our study is based on a representative survey of 603 rice farmers
from seven major rice-producing provinces in China. Rice is one of
the most important crops in China, occupying about 30 million
hectares of farmland in 2016. In addition, pesticide overuse is very
common in rice production in China (Sun et al., 2012).
The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows. Section 2
presents the theoretical framework and related hypotheses. Sec-
tion 3 outlines the data and models used, and the selection and
description of variables. The empirical results are shown in Section
4. Section 5 discusses the empirical results. Finally, conclusions are
provided in Section 6.
2. Theoretical framework and hypotheses
Based on the theoretical method proposed by Lusk and Coble
(2005), we developed the following model to analyze the impact
of risk attitude and risk perceptions on farmers’ pesticide applica-
tion behavior.
Supposing farmers’ utility function is UðWÞ, where W repre-
sents farmers’ wealth. Further assuming farmers’ perceived
outcome of using pesticide can be denoted by a random variable Z
and its variance is s2 , where Eðs2 Þ ¼ 0. As we stated forehead,
pesticide overuse is risky because it will cause potential damage to
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong
food quality, human health, soil degradation, water pollution, and
air pollution, so we define CE as the certainty equivalent, which
represents the amount of money that makes farmers indifferent
between using pesticides with outcome Z and being paid with a
certain amount of money CE. In other words, CE is the monetary
value of using pesticides to farmers, which can be written as:
E½UðW þ ZÞ ¼ UðW þ CEÞ (1)
Taking a Taylor series extension of W on both sides of Equation
(1), CE can be rewritten as:

00  significantly associated with pesticide application.
1 U ðWÞ
CE ¼  s2  0 (2)
2 U ðWÞ
00
ðWÞ
Where rðwÞ ¼ UU 0 ðWÞ denotes the risk aversion degree and s2
represents the risk attitude degree. Equation (2) indicates that
farmers’ pesticide application behavior is affected by two variables:
risk attitude rðwÞ and risk perception s2 . We illustrated the impact
of these two variables on pesticide use below.
Pesticides play a fundamental role in maintaining crop output
by controlling pest infestation (Shankar et al., 2008). Estimates
show that pesticide prevents the loss of one-third of total grain
output globally. In China, the reduction in grain output loss
resulting from pesticide use was 93.6 million metric tons in 2015,
which was 15.1% of total grain output (Sun et al., 2019). Therefore,
pesticides have been widely recognized as a risk-reducing input
that can lower the variance in production output (Feder, 1979). As a
risk-reducing tool, pesticide dosage is higher among risk-averse
farmers than risk-neutral farmers (Salazar and Rand, 2020). As
shown in Equation (2), we can see that an increase in rðwÞ is
associated with a rise in the value of pesticide use CE and thus
results in more pesticide dosage. Therefore, it is hypothesized that:
H1. Risk-averse farmers use more pesticides than risk-neutral
ones.
Although pesticide usage can prevent potential output loss, it
can also cause damage to food quality and human health and can
lead to soil degradation, water pollution, and air pollution. For
instance, massive pesticide overuse is linked to lower food quality
and lower food sale prices, thus decreasing farmers’ income. It is
reported that only 10e20% of the pesticide can be absorbed by
plants, and the remainder is left in the ground, which then causes
damage to food quality (Zhou et al., 2018). Pesticide overuse also
jeopardizes human health, via both pesticide exposure and diet-
related diseases resulting from pesticide residues in food. Esti-
mates show that 0.2 million people meet with pesticide poisoning
accidents in China annually (Wang et al., 2017). Lai (2017) has also
verified that a 10% growth in pesticide application will lead to a
14.22 million yuan increase in medical costs in China. Excessive
pesticide use has also been shown to have detrimental effects in
terms of soil compaction and degradation, water quality, and air
pollution (Sun et al., 2012). Dessart et al. (2019) have pointed out
that, in theory, risk perception is a strong positive predictor of
sustainable farming practices. Applying their theory to the context
of pesticide application behavior, we can assume that farmers’
perceptions of the risks mentioned above posed by pesticides may
also influence their pesticide application behavior. As shown in
Equation (2), an increase in s2 indicates that farmers perceive that
pesticide overuse will cause more damage, and it is therefore linked
with a decrease in the value of pesticide use CE and hence less
pesticide dosage. However, the risk of pesticide damage in terms of
soil degradation, water pollution, and air pollution is mostly a
matter of public goods. As profit-maximizing individuals, farmers
may not take these risks into account in their production decisions.
3
Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241
Previous studies have also shown that farmers’ perceptions of
environmental damage are not significantly associated with the
adoption of sustainable agricultural practices (Knowler and
Bradshaw, 2007; Chen et al., 2018). Therefore, it is hypothesized
that:
H2. Farmers’ perceptions of the risks posed by pesticides to food
quality and human health are negatively related to pesticide
application.
H3. Farmers’ perceptions of the risks posed by pesticides in terms
of soil degradation, water pollution, and air pollution are not
Risk perception also moderates and mediates the relationship
between risk attitude and pesticide application behavior. The
moderating effect means that when farmers realize that pesticide
use will entail higher risks, even if they are risk-averse, they may
reduce their pesticide usage. That is to say, the strength of the
relationship between risk attitude and pesticide application
behavior is weakened as risk perception increases. The mediating
effect implies that risk attitude is indirectly associated with pesti-
cide application behavior via farmers’ risk perception. Therefore, it
is hypothesized that:
H4. Risk perception weakens the relationship between risk atti-
tude and pesticide application behavior.
H5. Risk perception mediates the relationship between risk atti-
tude and pesticide application behavior.
Fig. 2 shows the theoretical model and hypotheses of this paper.
3. Data, model, and variables
3.1. Sample selection and survey design
We used a multi-stage sampling strategy to select the samples.
First, to gain a general picture of farmers’ pesticide application
behavior in China, we chose seven major rice-producing provinces
distributed in different parts of China (Fig. 3): Jiangsu and Shan-
dong provinces, located in eastern China, have an output volume of
rice 19.314 million tons and 0.881 million tons respectively; Jiangxi,
Hubei and Henan provinces, located in central China, have an
output volume of rice ranked 3, 5 and 13 respectively; Sichuan
province, located in western China, has an output volume of rice
ranked 6; Heilongjiang province, located in northern China, is the
second-largest rice production province. Hence, the seven selected
provinces can nationally represent China. Second, two counties in
each of the sampled provinces were selected according to their per
capita income: one county that has relatively higher per capita
income and the other has lower per capita income. Third, in a
similar pattern, two towns in each sampled counties and two vil-
lages in each sampled town were selected. Finally, 10e15 farmers
were randomly chosen in each sampled village, resulting in a total
number of 603 rice farmers.
Face-to-face interviews were conducted with each sampled rice
farmers during July and September 2017. Prior to the survey, a pilot
survey with 20 rice farmers was conducted in Jiangsu province to
pre-test the questionnaire to delete unclear questions and add
additional questions. A mixed team of eight enumerators, majoring
in agricultural economics or ecological economics, was chosen to
collect the data. To improve data accuracy, all the enumerators have
attended a two-day training workshop. In addition, to maintain
data quality, each farmer received 30 yuan, which was nearly a
quarter of their daily income, to complete the questionnaire.
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241

Risk perception

Risk Risk
perception Risk Risk Risk
perception
perception perception perception
of food of human
of soil of water of air
quality health
damage degradation pollution pollution
damage
H2
H3

Risk attitude
H4, H5

Risk Risk Risk

averse neutral loving H1 Farmers’ pesticide
application behavior

Fig. 2. Theoretical model and hypotheses.

Fig. 3. The location of the study area.

3.2. Model specification
3.2.1. Moderating effect of risk perception on the relationship
between risk attitude and pesticide application behavior
We used an interactive term model to evaluate the moderating
effect of risk perception. The model is as follows:
Pesticidei ¼ a0 þ a1 RiskAi þ a2 RiskPi þ a3 RiskAi *RiskPi
þ a4 Controli þ ε1
Where Pesticidei denotes pesticide application behavior of farmer i;
RiskAi represents farmers’ risk attitude; RiskPi indicates farmers’
risk perception towards pesticide use, including risk perceptions of
food quality damage, human health damage, soil degradation,
water pollution, and air pollution; Controli denotes the control
variables that influence farmers’ pesticide application behavior.
a1 and a2 represents the impact of farmers’ risk attitude and risk
perception on their pesticide application behavior, respectively;
(3) RiskAi *RiskPi is the interaction term of farmers’ risk attitude and
risk perception and a3 denotes the moderating effect of risk

4
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong
perception on the relationship between risk attitude and pesticide
application behavior. If a3 and a1 are opposite, then risk perception
will weaken the relationship between risk attitude and pesticide
application; otherwise, it will strengthen the relationship between
risk attitude and pesticide application.
3.2.2. Mediating effect of risk perception on the relationship
between risk attitude and pesticide application behavior
Following the mediation effect model developed by Baron and
Kenny (1986), we used the following three models to test the
mediating effect of risk perception on the relationship between risk
attitude and pesticide application behavior:
Pesticidei ¼ d0 þ d1 RiskAi þ d2 Controli þ ε2
RiskPi ¼ b0 þ b1 RiskAi þ b2 Controli þ ε3
Pesticidei ¼ g0 þ g1 RiskAi þ g2 RiskPi þ g3 Controli þ ε4
In addition, because the mediator in our paper ee risk
perception, is a categorical data, ordinary least squares (OLS)
method cannot be applied to estimate Equation (5), Logistic
regression is more suitable. Assuming the number of category of
risk perception is j, therefore, Equation (5) can be rewritten as:
PðRiskPi > jjRiskAi Þ
RiskPi ¼ logitPðRiskPi > jjRiskAi Þ ¼ ln
1  PðRiskPi > jjRiskAi Þ
Where Equation (4) examines the link between risk attitude and
pesticide application behavior; Equation (5) investigates the rela-
tionship between risk attitude and risk perception. If d1 and b1 are
significant, Equation (6) continues to be estimated to test whether
risk attitude and risk perception both related to pesticide applica-
tion behavior. If b1 and g2 are both significant, then there is a
mediating effect of risk perception on the relationship between risk
attitude and pesticide application behavior. Besides, when g1 is
significant, then there is a partial mediating effect. When g1 is not
significant, then there is a full mediating effect.
In general, the mediating effect of risk perception can be
denoted as b1 g2 . However, the b1 in Equation (5) is estimated
through Logistic regression, while g2 in Equation (6) is computed
through OLS regression, so b1 needs to be standardized so that it is
on the same scale of g2 . Following MacKinnon (2012), the stan-
dardized b1 can be denoted as:
SDðRiskAi Þ
bstd
1 ¼ b1
SDðRiskPi Þ
Where SDðRiskAi Þ is the standard deviation of RiskAi , which can be
written as:
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
p2
SDðRiskPi Þ ¼ b21 varðRiskAi Þ þ
3 pesticide application behavior simultaneously. Following
2
Where p3 is the residual variance of standard logistic distribution.
So the mediating effect of risk perception can be denoted as bstd
1 g2 .
Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241
3.3. Variables selection
(1) Farmers’ pesticide application behavior. Most previous
studies have defined pesticide application behavior as the
quantity or frequency of pesticide use (Wang et al., 2017; Lai,
2017). We have defined it as pesticide expenditure (yuan per
hectare). This is because there are different types of pesticide
in China, and the active content varies among pesticide
types, so indicators such as the quantity or frequency of
pesticide application may not be accurate or reveal real
pesticide application behaviors (Ying et al., 2017).
(2) Farmers’ risk attitudes. Farmers’ risk attitudes were elicited
by asking the following question:
(4)
There are two operational plans. In the first plan, you will
definitely win 2000 yuan, while in the second plan, you will either
(5)
win 3000 yuan or lose 1000 yuan. Which one will you choose?
If the farmer chooses the first, then he or she is regarded as risk-
(6) averse; if the farmer chooses the second, he or she is viewed as risk-
loving; if the farmer thinks there is no difference between the two
plans, and then he or she is regarded as risk-neutral.
(3) Farmers’ risk perceptions. In terms of pesticide risk per-
ceptions, existing studies have emphasized farmers’ per-
ceptions of risks to human health and food quality from the
¼ b0 þ b1 RiskAi þ b2 Controli þ ε3 (7)
application of pesticides (Brainerd and Menon, 2014; Zhou
et al., 2018). We focus on perceptions of risks regarding not
only human health and food quality but also environmental
degradation. For this purpose, we constructed five questions
to measure farmers’ risk perceptions:
i. Food quality damage risk perception (RiskP-food): Do you
think the frequent and massive use of pesticides causes damage
to food quality?
ii. Human health damage risk perception (RiskP-health): Do you
think the frequent and massive use of pesticides causes damage
to human health?
iii. Soil degradation risk perception (RiskP-soil): Do you think the
frequent and massive use of pesticides causes damage to the
soil?
iv. Water pollution risk perception (RiskP-water): Do you think
the frequent and massive use of pesticides causes damage to
water quality?
v. Air pollution risk perception (RiskP-air): Do you think the
frequent and massive use of pesticides causes damage to air
(8) quality?
The answers to all five questions were arranged on a four-point
scale: “no idea”, “no impact”, “slight impact”, and “severe impact”.
(4) Control variables. This paper examines the link between risk
attitude, risk perception, and farmers’ pesticide application
behavior. As can be seen from Equations (4)e(6), the control
(9) variables should impact farmers’ risk perception and their
previous studies by Liu and Huang (2013), Wang et al. (2018),
Sun et al. (2019), and Che ze et al. (2020), we chose the
following as control variables: the individual and household
5
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241

characteristics of gender, health status, education, off-farm
employment, number of agricultural laborers, and share of
agricultural income; and the farming characteristics of farm
size, rice-planting years, soil fertility, and technical training.
3.4. Data description
3.4.1. Description of the sample
The summary statistics of the basic characteristics of the 603
respondents are shown in Table 1. Most respondents (76.1%) are
male and in good health. The majority of farmers have completed
less than six years of education, and more than half of them (57.2%)
have off-farm employment, which is in line with the phenomenon
that most Chinese farmers are with low education and engage in
off-farm jobs (Chadwick et al., 2015). The average number of agri-
cultural laborers is two, and agricultural income accounts for 33% of
total household income. The average sampled household is
assigned 1.11 ha of cultivated farmland, reflecting the smallholder
characteristics of Chinese agriculture. Farmers have been engaged
in rice-planting for more than ten years on average. Most soil is of
medium quality, and nearly half of respondents (42.5%) have
attended rice-planting technical training programs. Therefore,
based on the above statistics, we conclude that our survey samples
can be considered nationally representative.
3.4.2. Farmers’ risk attitudes and pesticide expenditure
The descriptive statistics regarding farmers’ risk attitudes and
pesticide expenditure are displayed in Table 2. It can be seen that
the majority of respondents (69.98%) are risk-averse. The pesticide
expenditure of risk-averse farmers is the highest (1257.51 yuan per
hectare); the corresponding number drops to 908.43 yuan per
hectare and 827.11 yuan per hectare for risk-neutral and risk-loving
farmers, respectively. The ANOVA c2 test shows that the differences
in pesticide expenditure among different risk attitudes are statis-
tically significant at the 1% level, indicating that risk-averse farmers
use more pesticides than their counterparts.
3.4.3. Farmers’ risk perceptions and pesticide expenditure
Table 3 presents descriptive statistics regarding farmers’ risk
perceptions and pesticide expenditure.
As shown in Table 3, farmers’ perceptions of the risks of pesti-
cide use are very low, with most respondents stating that pesticide
overuse has no or only slight impact on food quality, human health,
soil degradation, water pollution, and air pollution. However,
farmers’ perceptions of the risks of pesticide use in relation to food
quality and human health are much higher than in relation to soil
degradation, water pollution, or air pollution. For instance, 40.63%
and 37.48% of farmers state that pesticide use has a severe impact
on food quality and human health, whereas the corresponding
number drops to 35.99%, 24.21%, and 18.57% for soil degradation,
water pollution, and air pollution respectively. Regarding the dif-
ferences in pesticide expenditure among different risk perceptions,
it can be concluded that an increase in risk perceptions can lead to a
decrease in pesticide expenditure. For instance, farmers who state
that pesticide overuse has a severe impact on food quality spend
1066.95 yuan per hectare on pesticides, which is nearly 20% lower
than farmers who state that it has no impact. The ANOVA c2 test
shows that the differences in pesticide expenditure among
different risk perceptions regarding food quality and human health
are statistically significant at the 1% level, whereas they are not
statistically significant in relation to risk perceptions of soil
degradation, water pollution, or air pollution.
4. Empirical estimation results
4.1. Impact of risk attitude and risk perception on pesticide
application behavior (H1, H2, and H3)
We first examine the impact of risk attitude on farmers’ pesti-
cide application behavior (Model 1 in Table 4). The estimated re-
sults show that risk attitude has a statistically significant and
positive effect on pesticide expenditure. Thus H1 is supported. Risk-
averse farmers spend more money on pesticides than risk-neutral
or risk-loving farmers. Specifically, the estimated coefficient of
risk attitude is 0.096. As shown in Tables 1 and 2, more than half of
our sampled farmers are risk-averse, and the average value of risk
attitude is 2.482. Based on this finding, it can be estimated that if
the average farmer of our sample becomes risk-neutraldthe
average value of risk attitude decreased from current 2.482 to 2,
farmers’ pesticide expenditure could be reduced by 4.63%
[9.6*(2.482e2)].
We then investigate the effect of risk perceptions on farmers’
pesticide application behavior (Model 2 in Table 4). We find that the
perception of risks to food quality and human health has a statis-
tically significant and negative effect on pesticide expenditure,
while the perception of risks in terms of soil degradation, water
pollution, and air pollution has no effect on pesticide expenditure.
Thus H2 and H3 are also verified. Specifically, the estimated coef-
ficient of risk perception of food quality damage is 0.064. As

Table 1
Descriptive statistics.

Variables Definition Mean Std. Dev.

Pesticide expenditure The logarithm of pesticide expenditure during one rice-growing season in 2016 6.773 0.775
Risk attitude 1 ¼ risk-loving, 2 ¼ risk-neutral, 3 ¼ risk-averse 2.482 0.828
RiskP-food Risk perception of food quality damage: 1 ¼ no idea, 2 ¼ no impact, 3 ¼ slight impact, 4 ¼ severe impact 3.086 0.933
RiskP-health Risk perception of human health damage: 1 ¼ no idea, 2 ¼ no impact, 3 ¼ slight impact, 4 ¼ severe impact 2.993 0.949
RiskP-soil Risk perception of soil degradation: 1 ¼ no idea, 2 ¼ no impact, 3 ¼ slight impact, 4 ¼ severe impact 2.826 1.077
RiskP-water Risk perception of water pollution: 1 ¼ no idea, 2 ¼ no impact, 3 ¼ slight impact, 4 ¼ severe impact 2.539 1.074
RiskP-air Risk perception of air pollution: 1 ¼ no idea, 2 ¼ no impact, 3 ¼ slight impact, 4 ¼ severe impact 2.483 0.984
Agricultural income Share of agricultural income (%) 0.330 0.313
Off-farm employment Whether the head of the household has an off-farm job in 2016? 1 ¼ yes, 0 ¼ no 0.572 0.495
Agricultural laborers Number of agricultural laborers 2.148 0.957
Farm size Total cultivated farmland area (hectare) 1.11 3.26
Soil fertility 1 ¼ poor, 2 ¼ medium, 3 ¼ good 2.071 0.468
Technical training Whether the head of the household has participated in any rice planting technical trainings in 2016? 1 ¼ yes, 0 ¼ no 0.425 0.495
Gender 1 ¼ male, 0 ¼ female 0.761 0.427
Health 1 ¼ poor, 2 ¼ fair, 3 ¼ good, 4 ¼ excellent 1.909 0.790
Education 1 ¼ less than 1 year, 2 ¼ 1e5 years, 3 ¼ 6e8 years, 4 ¼ 9e12 years, 5 ¼ more than 12 years 2.524 0.990
Rice planting years 1 ¼ less than 3 years, 2 ¼ 3e10 years, 3 ¼ 10e15 years,4 ¼ more than 15 years 3.512 0.824

6
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241

Table 2
Statistics of farmers’ risk attitudes and pesticide expenditure.

Percentage (%) Pesticide expenditure (yuan per hectare) ANOVA c2 test

Risk-averse 69.98% 1257.51 3.65***

Risk-neutral 8.29% 908.43
Risk-loving 21.72% 827.11

Note: *** denotes statistical significance at the 1% level.

Table 3
Statistics of farmers’ risk perception and pesticide expenditure.

Variables Indicators Do not know No impact Slight impact Severe impact ANOVA c2 test

RiskP-food Percentage (%) 7.46% 17.08% 34.83% 40.63%

Pesticide expenditure 1451.25 1286.40 1072.50 1066.95 3.24***
RiskP-health Percentage (%) 7.13% 23.88% 31.51% 37.48%
Pesticide expenditure 1810.50 1098.15 1220.10 958.50 2.87***
RiskP-soil Percentage (%) 13.76% 29.19% 21.06% 35.99%
Pesticide expenditure 1440.15 1076.70 1105.35 1083.00 1.57
RiskP-water Percentage (%) 20.90% 28.52% 26.37% 24.21%
Pesticide expenditure 1319.85 1108.95 1209.90 924.75 1.26
RiskP-air Percentage (%) 17.25% 35.82% 28.36% 18.57%
Pesticide expenditure 1418.85 1081.80 1131.30 979.80 1.03

Note: *** denotes statistical significance at the 1% level.

Table 4
Impact of risk attitudes and risk perceptions on farmers’ pesticide application behavior.

Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Risk attitude 0.149***(0.034) 0.096***(0.035)

RiskP-food 0.096***(0.030) 0.064**(0.032)
RiskP-health 0.088***(0.033) 0.059*(0.034)
RiskP-soil 0.009 (0.036) 0.026 (0.037)
RiskP-water 0.007 (0.030) 0.0041 (0.030)
RiskP-air 0.006 (0.040) 0.016 (0.039)
Risk attitude  RiskP-food 0.091***(0.028)
Risk attitude  RiskP-health 0.068*(0.038)
Risk attitude  RiskP-soil 0.051 (0.040)
Risk attitude  RiskP-water 0.013 (0.033)
Risk attitude  RiskP-air 0.028 (0.041)
Agricultural income 0.639***(0.104) 0.642***(0.107) 0.595***(0.107)
Off-farm employment 0.227***(0.066) 0.231***(0.067) 0.208***(0.067)
Agricultural laborers 0.035 (0.030) 0.037 (0.031) 0.031 (0.031)
Farm size 0.829*(0.447) 1.042**(0.466) 0.956**(0.458)
Soil fertility 0.043 (0.054) 0.056 (0.056) 0.037 (0.057)
Technical training 0.360***(0.063) 0.332***(0.064) 0.328***(0.064)
Gender 0.260***(0.059) 0.221***(0.062) 0.214***(0.060)
Health 0.130***(0.035) 0.108***(0.038) 0.107***(0.038)
Education 0.017 (0.033) 0.032 (0.034) 0.036 (0.033)
Rice planting years 0.099**(0.040) 0.106***(0.039) 0.095**(0.038)
Constant 5.957***(0.237) 6.644***(0.259) 6.247***(0.235)
R2 0.241 0.241 0.271

Notes: (1) Standard errors are in parentheses; (2) ***, **, * denote statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively.

shown in Table 1, more than half of the farmers thought pesticide
use has a severe impact on food quality. Based on this finding, it can
be estimated that if farmers’ risk perception of food quality had
been enhanced from the average level to the level as those who had
all believed that pesticide use has a severe impact on food qual-
itydthe average value of risk perception of food quality damage
increases from the current 3.086 to 4, the pesticide expenditure
could be reduced by 5.85% [6.4*(4e3.086)]. Similarly, the estimated
coefficient of risk perception of human health damage is 0.059.
According to this finding, farmers’ pesticide expenditure could be
reduced by 5.95% [5.9*(4e2.993)] should their risk perception of
human health damage be improved from the average level to the
level as those who had all believed that pesticide use has a severe
impact on human healthdthe average value of risk perception of
human health increases from the current 2.993 to 4.
Some meaningful results are also observed among the control
variables. The higher the proportion of agricultural income, the
more pesticides farmers use. This is consistent with Wang et al.
(2017), who stated that households with higher agricultural in-
comes rely more on agricultural production and therefore use more
pesticides to avoid loss of agriculture income. Regarding the off-
farm employment, there are two explanations for the impact of
off-farm employment on pesticide use in existing literature. On one
hand, off-farm employment could reduce pesticide use in that off-
farm employment will lead to less time spent on agriculture and a
lower probability of adopting sustainable agricultural technologies
(Pan et al., 2017). On the other hand, off-farm employment could
lead to less pesticide use in that households with a higher pro-
portion of off-farm employment are often with a lower proportion
of agricultural income and thus will apply less pesticide. In our

7
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong
results, the positive effect of off-farm employment on pesticide use
is larger than its negative effect. Therefore, off-farm employment
shows a statistically significant and positive effect on pesticide
expenditure, indicating that farmers who are engaged in off-farm
jobs are more likely to overuse pesticides. Farm size has a statisti-
cally significant and negative effect on pesticide expenditure,
indicating that large-scale farmers use fewer pesticides than small-
scale farmers. This result is in line with Wu et al. (2018), who has
suggested that the benefits of decreasing pesticide use are larger for
large-scale farmers, who are therefore more likely to use less
pesticide. Providing technical training to farmers can significantly
decrease their pesticide expenditure. This is in line with findings by
Wang et al. (2018) and Huang et al. (2008). Higher pesticide
expenditure is related to farmers that are female, have bad health
status, and have more rice-planting years. Compared with male
farmers, female farmers are usually less-educated and less familiar
with the pesticide application technologies, and thus will apply
more pesticides in agricultural production (Yang et al., 2019).
Farmers with higher rice-planting years are more likely to rely on
their past pesticide use experience and tend to overuse pesticides
(Zhang et al., 2015). Farmers with bad health status are more
dependent on agricultural production and thus apply more pesti-
cides (Wang et al., 2017).
4.2. Moderating effect of risk perception (H4)
The above results show that risk attitude has a positive effect on
pesticide expenditure, while risk perception has a negative effect.
One subsequent question is whether risk perception can moderate
the relationship between risk attitude and pesticide expenditure.
We performed an interaction term model to answer this question.
The estimation results are shown in Model 3 in Table 4.
The coefficients of the interaction term of risk attitude with
perceptions of risks to food quality and human health are negative
and statistically significant, indicating that these two kinds of risk
perceptions can alleviate the effect of risk attitude on pesticide
expenditure. H4 is thus corroborated. Therefore, when a risk-averse
farmer perceives higher risk in relation to food quality and human
health, he or she will lower his or her pesticide expenditure.
Similarly to the results on the impact of risk perception on pesticide
expenditure, the coefficients of the interaction term of risk attitude
with perceptions of risks regarding soil degradation, water pollu-
tion, and air pollution are not significant, meaning that there is no
moderating effect of these three risk perceptions on the link be-
tween risk attitude and pesticide expenditure.
4.3. Mediating effect of risk perception (H5)
Table 6 presents the results regarding the mediating effect of
risk perception. According to the model specification in Section
3.2.2, we first tested the link between risk attitude and pesticide
application behavior, and the results are shown in Model 1 in
Table 5. Then we investigated the relationship between risk atti-
tude and risk perception, and the results are displayed in Models
2e6 in Table 5; Model 7 in Table 5 shows the results regarding the
mediating effect of risk perception.
The coefficients of risk attitude on perceptions of risks to food
quality (Model 2) and human health (Model 3) are significantly
positive, and the coefficients of perceptions of risks to food quality
and human health in Model 7 are also significant, indicating that
perceptions of risks to food quality and human health play a partial
mediating role in the relationship between risk attitude and
pesticide application behavior. In addition, the coefficient of risk
attitude in Model 7 is significantly positive, but it is smaller than the
corresponding coefficient in Model 1, which means that there is a
8
Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241
partial mediating effect. H5 is supported.
Further calculations demonstrate that the mediating effect of
std
the perception of risk to food quality is 0.021 (b1 g2 , where b1 ¼
std
0:247, g2 ¼ 0.084), accounting for 14.1% (0.021/0.149) of the total
effect. That is, 14.1% of the impact of risk attitude on pesticide
expenditure is via the perception of risk to food quality. Following
the same calculation method, the mediating effect of the percep-
tion of risk to human health is 0.015 (bstd std
1 g2 , where b1 ¼ 0:245,
g2 ¼ 0.063), accounting for 10.1% (0.015/0.149) of the total effect.
That is, 10.1% of the impact of risk attitude on pesticide expenditure
is via the perception of risk to human health.
In addition, we conducted a Sobel test to further examine the
significance of the mediating effect (Sobel, 1982). Table 6 shows
that the mediating effects of perceptions of risks to food quality and
human health are significant at the 5% and 10% levels, respectively,
indicating that there are indeed mediating effects of these two risk
perceptions.
Meanwhile, the coefficients of perceptions of risks in relation to
soil degradation, water pollution, and air pollution are not signifi-
cant in Model 7, indicating that there is no mediating effect of these
three risk perceptions, which is consistent with the results of the
moderating effects model.
4.4. Robustness checks and their results
To check the robustness of our results, we performed the
following two robustness checks. First, we are concerned that our
results may be biased resulting from omitted variables, so we add
more control variables into our models, including farmers’ knowl-
edge about banned pesticides, cooperative membership, and age.
Second, some studies argue that data outliners will influence esti-
mation results (Liu and Huang, 2013), so we winsorize the bottom
10% of our continuous variables. Robustness check results of
moderating effects and mediating effects are presented in Table 7
and Table 8, respectively. We find that the coefficients of key vari-
ables essentially remain unchanged, indicating that our results are
robust.
5. Discussion
The above empirical estimation results consistently suggest that
risk attitude and risk perception matters in farmers’ pesticide
application behavior. Herein, we discuss the reasons for the above
empirical results.
First, we found that risk aversion leads farmers to increase their
pesticide use. This result is consistent with Liu and Huang (2013)
and Gong et al. (2016). Knight et al. (2003) have pointed out that
farmers may seek a balance between expected income and income
variance, especially in developing countries such as China. Applying
their theory to our context, the main reason why farmers who are
risk-averse have higher pesticide expenditure is that they want to
prevent potential output loss. This reason is also verified by our
statistical analysis of farmers’ attitudes toward pesticide reduction.
Specifically, we asked each farmer: If your pesticide use in rice
production were decreased by 10%, would your rice output be
reduced? The results in Fig. 4 demonstrate that most risk-averse
farmers (71%) stated that there would be a definite reduction in
rice output, while only 35% of risk-neutral farmers and 19% of risk-
loving farmers gave the same answer.
However, a number of previous studies have provided evidence
that the actual amount of pesticide use in China is much higher
than the economically optimal level and thus, an increase of
pesticide use will not bring growth in yield. For example, the actual
amount of pesticides in rice, cotton, and maize production is 2.3,
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241

Table 5
The results of the mediating effects of risk perception.

Variables First stage Second stage Third stage

Model 1: Model 2: Model 3: Model 4: Model 5: Model 6: Model 7:

Pesticides expenditure RiskP-food RiskP-health RiskP-soil RiskP-water RiskP-air Pesticides expenditure

Risk attitude 0.149*** (0.034) 0.560*** (0.111) 0.553*** (0.103) 0.197 (0.196) 0.149 (0.096) 0.066 (0.097)0.127*** (0.034)
RiskP-food 0.084*** (0.030)
RiskP-health 0.063* (0.034)
RiskP-soil 0.014 (0.036)
RiskP-water 0.000 (0.030)
RiskP-air 0.013 (0.039)
Agricultural income 0.639*** (0.104) 1.072*** (0.284)> 0.268 (0.287) 0.114 (0.278) 0.447 (0.275) 0.467* (0.277) 0.600*** (0.106)
Off-farm employment 0.227*** (0.066) 0.022 (0.176) 0.082 (0.176) 0.156 (0.170) 0.202 (0.168) 0.047 (0.168) 0.230*** (0.067)
Agricultural laborers 0.035 (0.030) 0.184** (0.082) 0.034 (0.088) 0.111 (0.084) 0.077 (0.078) 0.001 (0.081) 0.028 (0.030)
Farm size 0.829* (0.447) 4.736*** (1.280) 0.521 (1.277) 1.688 (1.238) – 0.284 (1.224) 2.088* (1.235) 1.035** (0.450)
Soil fertility 0.0426 (0.0544) 0.188 (0.169) 0.236 (0.170) 0.0610 (0.159) 0.207 (0.163) 0.148 (0.161) 0.042 (0.056)
Technical training 0.360*** (0.063) 0.525*** (0.169) 0.456*** (0.169) 0.415** (0.166) 0.134 (0.162) 0.509*** (0.166) 0.327*** (0.064)
Gender 0.260*** (0.059) 0.292 (0.189) 0.343* (0.196) 0.176 (0.188) 0.311* (0.186) 0.139 (0.185) 0.237*** (0.060)
Health 0.130*** (0.035) 0.127 (0.105) 0.634*** (0.110) 0.455*** (0.101) 0.333*** (0.101) 0.321*** (0.102) 0.107*** (0.037)
Education 0.017 (0.033) 0.126 (0.089) 0.136 (0.086) 0.064 (0.086) 0.136 (0.084) 0.004 (0.084) 0.028 (0.033)
Rice planting years 0.099** (0.040) 0.062 (0.098) 0.107 (0.100) 0.0710 (0.099)< 0.079 (0.096) 0.102 (0.095) 0.092** (0.038)
Prob > chi2 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.241 0.059 0.062 0.025 0.021 0.022 0.257

Note: (1) Standard errors are in parentheses; (2) ***, **, * denote statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively.

Table 6 limited knowledge of scientific pesticide management further in-

The results of the Sobel test of mediating effects. duces risk-averse farmers to increase their pesticide use.
Mediators bstd SEðbstd g2 SEðg2 Þ Sobel test Second, we found that farmers’ perceptions of risk to profit-
1 1 Þ
maximizing factors can decrease their pesticide expenditure, while
RiskP-food  0:247 0.049 0.084 0.03 2.445**
their perceptions of environmental risks have no impact on pesticide
RiskP-health  0:245 0.046 0.063 0.034 1.750*
expenditure. This result is in line with previous studies suggesting
1 bstd g
2 std SDðRiskAi Þ that farmers’ sustainable practices are influenced by concerns about
Notes: (1) ZSobel ¼ rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi , SEb1 ¼ SEðb1 Þ ; (2) **,
SDðRiskPi Þ
2 profit-maximizing factorsdtheir perceptions of risks to food quality
1 ðSEðg2 ÞÞ
bstd2 g22 ðSEbstd
2
þ 1 Þ
* denote statistical significance at the 5%, and 10%, respectively.
and human healthdrather than by worries about environmental
factorsdtheir perceptions of risks in terms of soil degradation, water
pollution, and air pollution (Wang et al., 2017; Knowler and
Bradshaw, 2007; Chen et al., 2018). A possible explanation for this
2.8, and 1.2 times higher than the optimal level (Zhang et al., 2015). result is that risks to food quality and human health have a direct
Sun et al. (2020) found that the marginal effect of pesticide impact on farmers’ well-being, such as decreasing income and
expenditure on crop yield decreases as pesticide expenditure ex- damaging health, and thus farmers may take these risks into account
pands. Huang et al. (2015) found that a reduction of pesticide use by in their pesticide use. However, the risks to soil degradation, water
10e35 percent had no adverse effect on rice yields. The contra- pollution, and air pollution are more like public goods, which do not
diction between the findings of these previous studies and the directly affect farmers’ well-being, and thus farmers may not take
farmers’ response to pesticide reduction in Fig. 4 indicate that these risks into account in their production decisions.
farmers lack sufficient knowledge of pesticide use. Most farmers One might be concerned that, apart from the fact that envi-
think that using more pesticide always result in higher yields, and a ronmental risks are mostly public goods, another contributor to the
reduction of pesticide use will definitely lead to a yield loss. This insignificant effect of environmental risks on pesticide use is that

Table 7
The results of robustness checks of moderating effects.

Robustness check 1: Robustness check 2:

Variables Adding more control variables Winsorizing the bottom 10% of data

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Risk attitude 0.116***(0.034) 0.085**(0.034) 0.098***(0.032) 0.075**(0.032)

RiskP-food 0.074**(0.030) 0.054*(0.032) 0.101***(0.029) 0.080***(0.030)
RiskP-health 0.064*(0.034) 0.058*(0.034) 0.055*(0.031) 0.067**(0.032)
RiskP-soil 0.020 (0.036) 0.033 (0.038) 0.003 (0.036) 0.012 (0.037)
RiskP-water 0.003 (0.030) 0.006 (0.030) 0.047 (0.029) 0.044 (0.030)
RiskP-air 0.006 (0.039) 0.010 (0.039) 0.020 (0.039) 0.020 (0.040)
Risk attitude  RiskP-food 0.089***(0.028) 0.081***(0.027)
Risk attitude  RiskP-health 0.072*(0.038) 0.059*(0.036)
Risk attitude  RiskP-soil 0.048 (0.040) 0.029 (0.038)
Risk attitude  RiskP-water 0.014 (0.033) 0.010 (0.031)
Risk attitude  RiskP-air 0.016 (0.041) 0.009 (0.041)
Constant 6.579***(0.329) 6.437***(0.300) 6.167***(0.270) 5.987***(0.239)
Control variables Yes Yes Yes Yes

Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. ***, **, * denote statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively.

9
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241

Table 8
The results of robustness checks of mediating effects.

Variables Model 1: Model 2: Model 3: Model 4: Model 5: Model 6: Model 7:

Pesticides RiskP-food RiskP-health RiskP-soil RiskP-water RiskP-air Pesticides expenditure
expenditure

Robustness check 1: Adding more control variables

Risk attitude 0.134*** (0.033) 0.496*** (0.112) 0.557*** (0.105) 0.198** (0.098) 0.120 (0.098) 0.073 (0.098) 0.116*** (0.034)
RiskP-food 0.074** (0.030)
RiskP-health 0.064* (0.034)
RiskP-soil 0.021 (0.036)
RiskP-water 0.003 (0.030)
RiskP-air 0.006 (0.039)
Control variables Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Prob > chi2 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.253 0.068 0.0690 0.032 0.030 0.032 0.267
Robustness check 2: Winsorizing the bottom 10% of data
Risk attitude 0.122*** (0.031) 0.618*** (0.116) 0.607*** (0.108) 0.182* (0.100) 0.175* (0.100) 0.135 (0.100) 0.098*** (0.032)
RiskP-food 0.101*** (0.029)
RiskP-health 0.055* (0.031)
RiskP-soil 0.003 (0.036)
RiskP-water 0.047 (0.029)
RiskP-air 0.020 (0.039)
Control variables Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Prob > chi2 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.257 0.068 0.075 0.029 0.023 0.028 0.277

Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. ***, **, * denote statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively.

80% 73% 71%

70% Risk-averse
60% Risk-neutral 57%
Risk-loving
50%
40% 35%
30%
20% 19%
20%
9% 8% 8%
10%
0%
No idea Not reduced Definitely reduced

Fig. 4. Farmers’ perception of output loss with 10% decrease of pesticides.

Note: the survey question is “If your pesticide use in rice production were decreased by 10%, would your rice output be reduced”.

farmers are not clear enough about the specific environmental
risks. We provide the following two explanations to address this
concern. First, in our face-to-face interviews, the environmental
risks of soil degradation, water pollution, and air pollution were
carefully elaborated to make sure farmers understand the specific
meaning of these environmental risks. Second, as shown in Tables 1
and 2, more than half of our sampled farmers stated that pesticide
use has a slight or severe impact on soil degradation, water pollu-
tion, and air pollution. However, even though farmers realize the
environmental risks of pesticide use, there is still an insignificant
relationship between environmental risks and pesticide expendi-
ture. This finding further confirms that the characteristic of the
public goods of environmental risks, rather than farmers’ low
cognition of environmental risks, is the major reason for the
insignificant effect of environmental risks on pesticide use.
6. Conclusions
Regulating farmers’ pesticide application behavior is a funda-
mental part of environmental sustainability and food safety in
China, as pesticide use has not only led to severe environmental
degradation, but has also threatened food safety and human health
10
(Zhou et al., 2018). Based on a nationally representative survey of
603 rice farmers from seven major rice-producing provinces in
China, this paper takes risk perceptions as the moderator and
mediator to investigate the impact of risk attitudes and risk per-
ceptions on farmers’ pesticide application behavior. The paper
draws the following conclusions:
i. Farmers’ risk aversion increases their pesticide expenditure,
that is, risk-averse farmers are more likely to use more
pesticides.
ii. Farmers’ perceptions of risk to profit-maximizing factors,
namely the perceptions of risks to food quality and human
health associated with pesticides, can decrease their pesti-
cide expenditure, while the perceptions of environmental
risks, namely the perceptions of risks in terms of soil
degradation, water pollution, and air pollution, are not
significantly associated with pesticide expenditure.
ii. The perceptions of risks to food quality and human health
have a moderating effect on the relationship between risk
attitude and pesticide application behavior. The negative “risk
perceptionepesticide expenditure” effect can offset the
D. Pan, M. He and F. Kong
positive “risk attitudeepesticide expenditure” effect to some
extent.
iv. The perceptions of risks to food quality and human health
also have a partial mediating effect on the relationship be-
tween risk attitude and pesticide application behavior. Sta-
tistically, perceptions of risks to food quality and human
health make contributions of 14.1% and 10.1% respectively to
the positive impact of risk attitude on pesticide expenditure.
Our findings have some important policy implications regarding
environmental and agricultural sustainability in China:
i. Given that risk-averse farmers are more likely to use excessive
pesticides, there seems to be a need to offer farmers some risk
management tools, such as crop insurance, to mitigate their
potential output loss from reducing pesticides. This is especially
important in China, where access to the formal insurance mar-
ket is limited and most farmers are risk-averse.
ii. Given that most farmers lack sufficient knowledge of pesticide
use that further induces risk-averse farmers to use more pesti-
cides, effective knowledge training programs should be devel-
oped and implemented to improve farmers’ knowledge of
scientific pesticide management.
ii. The confirmed role of perceptions of risks to food quality and
human health in relation to pesticide expenditure, and the
moderating and mediating effects of these two risk perceptions
on the relationship between risk attitude and pesticide expen-
diture, indicate that educating farmers about the risks to food
quality and human health associated with pesticide overuse
could be an effective tool to ensure agricultural sustainability.
iv The insignificant effect of risk perceptions regarding soil
degradation, water pollution, and air pollution suggests that
educational efforts should focus on the economic losses asso-
ciated with pesticide overuse, such as in relation to food quality
and human health, rather than on the environmental benefits of
reducing pesticides.
Our study adds to the literature by examining the impact of
psychological determinants, especially farmers’ risk attitudes and
risk perceptions, on farmers’ pesticide application behavior. Also,
we have identified the moderating and mediating effects of risk
perceptions. A limitation of this study is that we only focus on rice
farmers in seven provinces in China. Further studies incorporating
other crops and larger sample sizes are necessary to test the
external validity of our findings.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Dan Pan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Mimi He:
Software, Data curation, Writing - original draft. Fanbin Kong:
Conceptualization, Project administration, Funding acquisition,
Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing in-
terests or personal relationships that could have appeared to in-
fluence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the National Youth Talent Support
Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.
71863016; No. 71673123), the Outstanding Youth of Natural Science
11
Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 124241
Foundation in Jiangxi Province (No. 2018ACB21004), and the Sci-
ence and Technology Research Foundation of Jiangxi Province (No.
GJJ170349).
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