The agricultural ecological environment provides an important resource guarantee for social development. The extensive management mode of agriculture in China has not fundamentally changed; the contradiction between production and governance is still prominent, and the management of agricultural surface pollution has a long way to go. Based on the data from 572 rural households in Jiangxi province, this paper uses the Ordered Logit, 2SLS, and the moderation effect model to analyze the mechanism between social norms (SNs) and rural households’ (RHs) disposal of pesticide packaging waste (PPW) and to test the moderation effect of environmental regulation (ER) in the influence path of SN to RHs’ disposal of PPW. The results show that (1) descriptive norms and directive norms promote RHs not littering PPW; the probability of RHs not littering PPW increases by 4.0% for each unit decrease in descriptive norms, and the probability of RHs not littering PPW increases by 12.1% when there are directive norms, but the directive norms are more significant than the descriptive norms. Consistent conclusions were obtained after the robustness test and endogeneity treatment. (2) Reputational incentives strengthen the promotional effect of directive norms on RHs’ behavior of not littering PPW; punitive regulations hinder the promotional effect of descriptive norms on RHs’ behavior of not littering PPW. Based on the findings of the study, the following policy recommendations are put forward: Actively cultivate SNs and give full play to their role in promoting RHs’ choice of the disposal behavior of PPW; improve the role of ER in regulating RHs’ choice of the disposal behavior of PPW; guide the ER and SNs to work in coordination.

The agricultural ecological environment provides an important resource guarantee for social development. The extensive management mode of agriculture in China has not fundamentally changed; the contradiction between production and governance is still prominent, and the management of agricultural surface pollution has a long way to go. Based on the data of 547 rural households in Jiangxi province, this paper uses the Ordered Logit, 2SLS, and moderation effect model to analyze the mechanism between social norms (SNs) and rural households’ (RHs) disposal of pesticide packaging waste (PPW) and to test the moderation effect of environmental regulation (ER) in the influence path of SN to RHs’ disposal of PPW. The results show that (1) descriptive and directive norms can promote RHs not to litter PPW. However, the role of surrounding crowd supervision (directive norms) is more obvious than the behavior of the surrounding crowd (descriptive norms). The consistent conclusion was still obtained after the robustness test and endogeneity treatment. (2) The results of the moderation effect test showed that reputational incentives strengthened the promotional effect of directive norms on RHs' behavior of not littering PPW; punitive regulation hindered the promotional effect of descriptive norms on RHs' behavior of not littering PPW. Based on the findings of the study, the following policy recommendations are put forward: continue to strengthen the guidance and soft binding force of informal institutions such as SNs; accurately locate the target groups and formulate differentiated measures; pay attention to the complementary nature of formal and informal institutions, and reasonably formulate environmental regulations to fit in with SNs.

Education is fundamental to enhancing the quality of life and ensuring social and economic progress. However, the divisive economic structure separating urban and rural areas in China led to insufficient educational investment in rural China, and trapped farmers’ children in the agricultural sector. Land is one major asset of rural households, and can generate income or be mortgaged for credit used for educational investment. This study explored the relationship between land endowment and parental educational investment of rural households, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, breaking down the effect of land endowment into two different components for the better promotion of educational investment. Based on data from a 2018 survey in Jiangxi Province, where rural education investment is severely restricted by the level of economic development, this study shows that the income and wealth effects of land endowment exists, and both increase the probability of educational investment. The wealth effect dominates the income effect when the households managed large-scale land or owned more land with contract rights. However, when the land endowment was less than a threshold of 3.85 mu, the wealth effect was replaced by the substitution effect, which conversely restrained educational investment for small-scale farmers in rural China. These findings highlight the importance of large-scale farmland as a mortgageable, or income-generating, asset in stimulating educational investment. Therefore, China should continue adhering to reform through the market-oriented land transfer system, with the government actively playing a role in ensuring the stability of land transfer and the security of land management rights, and increasing productivity for a high agricultural income to achieve sustainable educational investment.