Green prevention and control technology (GPCT) represents an eco-friendly approach in agriculture, aimed at promoting sustainability by reducing farmers’ excessive use of chemical pesticides. Despite the Chinese government having made a large effort to promote the technology, the farmers’ utilization is still low in China, especially when no financial incentives are provided to farmers. This study took 642 farmer questionnaires in Hua county, China, to analyze the effect of information awareness on farmers’ adoption of GPCT. Our findings indicate that farmers’ information awareness is a significant factor in their decision to adopt GPCT. Furthermore, the underlying mechanisms of the influence of information awareness on farmers’ GPCT adoption have been studied. Mechanism analysis shows that farmers’ information awareness affects the adoption of GPCT mainly through social networks. Farmers’ environmental values significantly reinforce the positive influence of information awareness on GPCT adoption. In addition, the regression results from the sub-sample indicate that information awareness has a more pronounced marginal effect on GPCT adoption for farmers with long years of schooling and larger wheat cultivation areas. These results offer insights for promoting GPCT in developing nations.

Information attributes characterize traceable agri-food. The perceived value of information attributes influences consumers’ preferences for traceable agri-food, consisting of two dimensions, predictive value and confidence value. We examine heterogeneous preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) in China’s traceable agri-food market. Using the choice experiments, we explore how the traceability information, certification type, region of origin, and price influence Chinese consumers’ Fuji apple choices. We identify three consumer classes by a latent class model: certification-oriented class (65.8%), price-sensitive and origin-oriented class (15.0%), and no-buy class (19.2%). The results show that consumer sociodemographic characteristics, predictive value, and confidence value are the heterogeneous sources that determine their preferences for Fuji apple information attributes. Specifically, consumers’ age, family income per month, and whether the family has children under 18 significantly impact the membership probability of consumers in both certification-oriented and price-sensitive and origin-oriented classes. Consumers’ predicted value and confidence value significantly impact the membership probability of consumers in the certification-oriented class. In contrast, consumers’ predicted value and confidence value have no significant impact on the membership probability of consumers in price-sensitive and origin-oriented class.