An empirical exploration into the determinants of rice farmers’ decisions to adopt low-carbon agricultural technologies in Hubei Province, China

Agricultural greenhouse gas emission is a well-known contributor to anthropogenic climate change. It is imperative to encourage farmers to adopt low-carbon agricultural technologies (LATs). In this paper, the Delphi method was used to select nine LATs with good carbon emission reduction effects among all possible technologies adopted in the agricultural production process. Moreover, based on the survey data of 1114 farmers in Hubei province of China, we identified the potential determinants of rice farmers’ decisions to adopt LATs and obtained the hierarchical structure of these determinants by employing the multivariate probit model, ordered probit model, and interpretative structural model. Results showed that there were strong complementary relationships between the nine LATs, and most rice farmers (83.48%) adopted three or fewer LATs simultaneously. It was also found that rice farmers’ decisions to adopt LATs were mainly influenced by four types of factors, namely individual characteristics, family resource endowments, production managerial factors, and external environmental factors, with production managerial factors exerting the most significant effect. Specifically, for rice farmers who joined agricultural cooperatives, who thought the agricultural machinery costs were acceptable, and who had paddy fields with a higher concentration degree, the probability of the adoption of three or more LATs would increase by 18.05%, 3.81%, and 0.11%, respectively (21.97% in total). In addition, the key determinants of rice farmers’ decisions to adopt three or more LATs were divided into three levels, i.e., surface factors, middle-level factors, and deep factors. To promote LATs, policymakers should offer targeted incentives, such as agricultural machinery purchase subsidies, technical guidance, and agricultural cooperative services.