Against the backdrop of increasingly frequent extreme weather events and heightened market price volatility, investigating the relationship between agricultural insurance and farmers’ livelihood resilience is crucial for ensuring rural socioeconomic stability. This study utilizes field survey data from 1196 households across twelve county-level divisions (three cities and nine counties) from China’s Hainan and Yunnan provinces, specifically in natural rubber-producing regions. Using propensity score matching (PSM), we empirically examine agricultural insurance’s impact on household livelihood resilience. The results demonstrate that agricultural insurance increased the effect on farmers’ livelihood resilience by 1%. This effect is particularly pronounced among recently poverty-alleviated households and large-scale farming operations. Furthermore, the analysis highlights the mediating roles of credit availability, adoption of agricultural production technologies, and production initiative in strengthening insurance’s positive impact. Therefore, policies should be refined and expanded, combining agricultural insurance with credit support and agricultural technology extension to leverage their value and ensure the sustainable development of farm households.

Evaluating the effect of recycling Pesticide Packaging Waste (PPW) is essential for improving recycling rates, which plays a crucial role in controlling environmental pollution and optimizing the efficiency of agricultural resources worldwide. Based on the micro-survey data of 1223 farmers in Yunnan and Hainan provinces of China, this study measures the economic effect by the farmers’ annual total household income and the ecological effect by the ecological environment quality of villages. The propensity score matching method (PSM) is employed to empirically test the economic and ecological effects of farmers’ recycling behavior of PPW and their differences. The research findings are as follows: Farmers’ recycling of PPW can generate significant positive economic and ecological effects, which are 116.7% and 4%, respectively. The heterogeneity analysis shows that farmers with a low degree of land fragmentation have a more obvious economic effect from PPW recycling, while farmers with a higher degree of land fragmentation have a more significant ecological effect; farmers with high pesticide costs have more significant economic and ecological effects from PPW recycling. Based on these findings, it is suggested to increase the attention at the policy level, enhance farmers’ environmental awareness and capacity, and focus on the characteristics of different groups.