Ever-increasing global environmental issues, land degradation, and groundwater contamination may significantly impact the agricultural sector of any country. The situation worsens while the global agricultural sectors are going through the unsustainable intensification of agricultural production powered by chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This trend leads the sector to exercise environmentally friendly technology (EFT). Capital endowment and ecological cognition may significantly impact fostering farmers’ adoption of environmentally friendly technology. The government also tends to change the existing policies to cope with ever-increasing challenges like pollution control, maintaining ecological balance, and supporting agricultural sectors substantially by employing ecological compensation policy. The study’s main objective is to explore the impacts of farmer’s ecological compensation, capital endowment, and ecological cognition for the adoption of EFT. The empirical setup of the study quantifies with survey data of 471 apple farmers from nine counties of Shandong province. The study used Heckman’s two-stage model to craft the findings. The results showed that 52.02% of fruit farmers adopted two environmentally friendly technologies, and 23.99% of fruit farmers adopted three forms of environmentally friendly technologies. At the same time, we have traced that the capital endowment, planting scale, family income, and technical specialization of fruit farmers significantly impact adopting EFT. The study also revealed that understanding ecological compensation policy has a significant positive effect on adopting environmentally friendly technology. Seemingly, ecological compensation policy has a specific regulatory effect on fruit farmers’ capital endowment and ecological cognition. Therefore, it is necessary to extend the demonstration facilities, training, and frequently arrange awareness-building campaigns regarding rural non-point source pollution hazards and improve the cognition level of farmers. The agriculture extension department should strengthen the agricultural value chain facilities to make farmers fully realize the importance of EFT. Government should promote and extend the supports for availing new and innovative EFT at a reasonable price. Moreover, cooperative, financial, and credit organizations need to lead for the smooth transition of EFT. The agricultural cooperatives and formal risk-taking networks should act responsibly for shaping the behavioral factors of farmers.

This paper aims to assess young farmers' willingness to adopt sustainable agriculture (SA) by implementing the expanded theory of planned behavior (TPB) within the northern region of Bangladesh. The outcomes attained specified that attitudes toward SA, perceived behavior control and perceived self-identity have progressive and fundamental impacts on adoption behavior and affect farmers' intentions to adopt SA's particular production mechanism. On the other hand, the social interface view toward SA is not significantly associated with the Bangladeshi farmer's adoption intention. The results also show that interconnections between social and familial pressure are not significant for sustainable farming practice adoption intentions. However, the interconnections among the psychosocial factors have a crucial role in formulating the TPB to forecast the intentional behavior for adopting SA practices. Thus, the government should highlight the advantages of several sustainable agricultural practices and circulate more detailed information regarding SA tactics to improve the knowledge gap of smallholder farmers. Furthermore, training facilities should be extended to improve the attitude and perceived self-identity of young farmers. Moreover, the formulation of structural information sharing platforms and agricultural value chain facilities should also help shape young farmers' interpersonal behavior in adopting SA practices.

Farmers’ adoption of water-saving irrigation technology (WSIT) is essential for achieving high-quality agricultural development. An in-depth analysis of the impact of risk aversion, technical training and their interaction on farmers’ adoption of WSIT will help the government to promote WSIT to facilitate agricultural resource conservation and sustainable development. The study takes 707 farmers who grow watermelons and muskmelon in Yuncheng and Xian City of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces as the research object to analyse the influence of risk aversion and technical training and their interaction terms on farmers’ WSIT adoption behaviour. The study uses the Probit and moderating effect models to outline the findings. The empirical analysis reveals the following outcomes: (i) 27.44% of the sample farmers adopt water-saving irrigation technology, indicating that the current adoption rate and the enthusiasm for adoption are relatively low; (ii) risk aversion has a significant negative impact on farmers’ adoption of WSIT; (iii) both online and offline technical training have a significant positive impact on farmers’ adoption of WSIT; (iv) significant group differences exist in the effects of risk aversion, online technical training, offline technical training and interaction items on farmers’ WSIT adoption behaviour. Therefore, the study proposes to strengthen the role of technical training in the diffusion of WSIT and implement differentiated technical training for different types of farmers to reduce the degree of risk aversion of farmers.

With the recent developments in widespread internet usage and digital technology, an ultimate worldwide transformation in information and communications technology has occurred. Especially, how people engage in the virtual market for buying and selling goods has changed dramatically, which flourished the playground of electronic commerce (EC). Interestingly, it has become crucial to create an ample opportunity for farmers to utilize a more comprehensive market range for selling their products. However, farmers participating in e-commerce sales platforms may be interrupted by various internal and external factors. Therefore, the study’s primary goal is to evaluate the impacts of various external and internal factors on shaping farmers’ behavior in participating in e-commerce sales platforms. The study utilized a demand observable bivariate Probit model to analyze the village environment and capital endowment effects to craft the findings. The study utilized micro-survey data from 686 households in the leading kiwifruit-producing area as the empirical setup. The findings illustrated that the village environment is the main factor that restricts farmers’ e-commerce sales behavior, among which the infrastructure and policy environments have a significant contribution to farmers’ e-commerce sales intention and behavior. However, the effect of capital endowment on farmers’ e-commerce selling behavior has been found as significant. The village environment significantly affects both large- and small-scale farmers, and the capital endowment has a higher binding effect on small-scale farmers. Therefore, the paper suggests that improving the village environment for e-commerce development and laying the foundation for e-commerce development should be fostered. A differentiated incentive mechanism to improve the capital endowment of farmers should be constructed. A well-structured capital endowment triggering small farmers to capture the benefits of e-commerce sales should be imposed. The government should extend the support of the agricultural demonstration zone to facilitate practical training among the smallholder farmers. The formal and informal risk-sharing and financial institutions should prioritize building infrastructure to support farmers’ short- and long-term investments. Farmers should realize the importance of e-commerce for integrating the agricultural value chain.

China has witnessed accelerated urbanization since the reforms and open policies which began in 1978. This eventually resulted in increased residential water requirements and worsening water shortages, particularly in the current century. In the context of resource and environmental constraints, improving agricultural water use efficiency (AWUE) is a crucial issue to ensure food security, improve the ecological environment, and meet the needs of sustainable agricultural development. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 1999 to 2018, the article uses the Super-SBM model to measure the AWUE. Moreover, the study uses the entropy method to establish the urbanization evaluation index system from the dimensions of population, land, economy, measures the comprehensive level of urbanization development, and further constructs a dynamic spatial econometric model. We use the unconditional maximum likelihood estimation method to evaluate the impact of urbanization development on AWUE and its heterogeneity. The findings reveal that the AWUE considering undesired outcomes has generally shown a steady improvement, but there is ample space for resource conservation and environmental protection, and there are noticeable differences among regions. The decomposition of spatial effects shows that urbanization development in each region has a short-term positive effect on AWUE in the region and neighboring regions, and a long-term effect exists only in the western region. The impact of urbanization in different dimensions has been found that both land urbanization and economic urbanization contribute to the improvement of AWUE, while population urbanization helps to improve AWUE by improving the awareness level of the farmers.