Organic grains are essential for the organic food industry. In the U.S., low adoption of organic grain farming has constrained further development of the organic food sector. Organic food industry stakeholders have appealed to producers to increase domestic organic grain production. The U.S. federal government supports research and extension education regarding organic farming. In this context, there is a need for both agricultural researchers and extension professionals to further (1) examine the factors that motivate farmers to adopt organic grain farming and (2) identify the challenges that hinder farmers’ adoption of organic grain farming. We conducted 17 in-depth interviews with organic grain farmers in Iowa, USA. By applying multiple social-behavioral theories as part of the analysis and comparing interview results with the literature, we gained insight into the ways in which farmers formed adoption motivations, and we captured the dynamics of the motivations. We specifically identified challenges to adoption that were associated with organic farming operation and management, organic market accessibility, information and inputs availability, social tension, and level of support from the government. These findings shed light on the ways in which farmers’ adoption challenges have evolved with institutional, ecological, and technological changes over time and how contemporary research and extension may encourage adoption.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the tourism industry worldwide. This study examines the relationships among potential tourists’ emotional states, psychological resilience, and their travel intention to a national forest park in the context of COVID-19. It also investigates the moderating effect of gender. Kanas National Forest Park on the northwestern border of China was chosen as the research case. The survey questionnaires were administered both online and offline to collect data. A total of 492 valid questionnaires were collected (263 from online and 229 from offline) and analyzed in this study. Results demonstrate that visitors’ positive emotions have significant positive effects on their psychological resilience and travel intention. Yet, visitors’ negative emotions have significant negative effects on psychological resilience and travel intention. Moreover, psychological resilience partially mediates the relationship between emotional state and travel intention, indicating that visitors’ positive emotion and negative emotion can not only directly affect travel intention, but also indirectly affect travel intention through psychological resilience. The results of moderating effect analysis indicate that men and women are found to have differences in the experience of emotion, and women are more advised to foster positive emotions and psychological resilience. Visitors are advised to advocate more mutual encouragement, and tourism practitioners are recommended to provide tailored services to reduce travel anxiety. Findings provide implications on emotional regulation for tourists and crisis management strategies for nature-based tourism destinations.

With the economic development and rising living standards in rural China, the amount of household waste generated continues to increase, causing serious pollution to the environment and risks to public health. Promoting the classification of rural household waste is a critical way to improve the dwelling environment and control disease transmission in rural areas. Using the 2021 China Land Economic Survey (CLES) conducted in rural areas of Jiangsu province, China, this research explores how economic incentives and reputational incentives impact rural residents’ participation in household waste classification intention and behavior. The results show that most surveyed rural residents have the intention to classify their household waste, but only half of them perform the waste classification behavior. Furthermore, both economic incentives and reputation incentives have significant positive effects on rural residents’ intention and behavior regarding household waste classification, and there exists a complementary effect between them, which indicates that a combination of economic incentives and reputation incentives will increase the participation rate of rural residents in household waste classification. Finally, based on the findings, we put forward recommendations for rural waste management policies, including synergizing both economic incentives and reputation incentives, improving the mobilization system, and strengthening publicity and education on household waste classification.

The potential for farmers and agriculture to sequester carbon and contribute to global climate change goals is widely discussed. However, there is currently low participation in agricultural carbon markets and a limited understanding of farmer perceptions and willingness to participate. Furthermore, farmers’ concerns regarding data privacy may complicate participation in agricultural carbon markets, which necessitates farmer data sharing with multiple entities. This study aims to address research gaps by assessing farmers’ willingness to participate in agricultural carbon markets, identifying the determinants of farmers’ willingness regarding carbon markets participation, and exploring how farmers’ concerns for data privacy relate to potential participation in agricultural carbon markets. Data were collected through a multistate survey of 246 farmers and analyzed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and multinomial regression models. We find that the majority of farmers (71.8%) are aware of carbon markets and would like to sell carbon credits, but they express high uncertainty about carbon market information, policies, markets, and cost impacts. Just over half of farmers indicated they would share their data for education, developing tools and models, and improving markets and supply chains. Farmers who wanted to participate in carbon markets were more likely to have higher farm revenues, more likely to share their data overall, more likely to share their data with private organizations, and more likely to change farming practices and had more positive perceptions of the impact of carbon markets on farm profitability. In conclusion, farmers have a general interest in carbon market participation, but more information is needed to address their uncertainties and concerns.

Rural ecological revitalization (RER) is one of the five goals of China’s rural revitalization strategy. However, there is a lack of an effective index system to evaluate RER levels, which hinders the implementation of this national policy and reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of public resource input. Using the driver-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) framework, this study developed an evaluation framework consisting of 5 subsystems, 12 secondary indicators, and 33 tertiary indicators. Using the entropy-weighted TOPSIS method, we analyzed a set of 30 provinces’ data and empirically determined the weights of each indicator. We found that the response subsystem had the largest weight (0.338), followed by the state (0.271), impact (0.148), pressure (0.130), and driver (0.113). We then evaluated the RER level in each province and found that five provinces had high RER levels, 16 provinces had moderate RER levels, and nine provinces had low RER levels. Using Moran’s I, we examined spatial autocorrelation of provincial RER levels at global and local dimensions. We found significant positive global autocorrelations across all subsystems, indicating that geological aggregation exists in all RER subsystems. The local autocorrelation results showed that low–low and high–high patterns were the dominant local autocorrelation patterns. According to the findings, we discussed the possible implications of this RER evaluation index system and provided policy recommendations for strengthening RER in different regions across the country.