Determinants and Regional Disparities of Environment-friendly Agriculture

The major purposes of this paper are 1) to explore the major determinants that affect the adoption of environmental agriculture in farming households, and 2) to investigate the regional differences for this indicator. We utilized Korea Agricultural Survey Data, which has not been fully utilized before. The present study pay particular attention to the hierarchical structure of the data and spatial units when applying our statistical models in our empirical settings. The present study apply multi-level logit models that can incorporates diverse spatial heterogeneities as well as individual differences. We found that there are big differences among regions that apply environmental agriculture. The present study also found that while education is positively associated with the adoption of environmental agriculture at the individual level, farm households with higher level education are less likely to adopt environmental agriculture at the regional level. Based on the findings of this study, the present study concludes with introducing several policy implications and future studies for the prosperity of Korean farming households and rural societies.