Environmental knowledge, risk attitude, and households' willingness to accept compensation for the application of degradable agricultural mulch film: Evidence from rural China

The promotion and use of degradable agricultural mulch film are satisfactory means to realize the pollution control of agricultural mulch film. Today, when the cost of degradable agricultural mulch film is much higher than that of ordinary agricultural mulch film, appropriate policy tools must be identified. However, relevant research is relatively rare. This paper attempts to understand the acceptability of households of policy tools by investigating households' willingness to apply degradable agricultural mulch film to reduce agricultural mulch film pollution and their requirements for compensation proportion, to make this sector cleaner and pay more attention to the implementation of sustainability principles. The sample is five cities in Hubei province, China; the study is based on extended planned behavior (TPB) theory; and we use the double-hurdle model to analyze whether to accept compensation and proportion of compensation of households. The main results show that the more households know about policies, the higher the proportion of compensation required. However, households with high knowledge of ecological value are willing to adopt degradable agricultural mulch films even if the government provides less compensation. In addition, risk-biased households are willing to voluntarily bear more additional costs of degradable agricultural mulch films. The results obtained have multiple meanings. First, in today's rural areas of China, compared with the formal government regulations, informal regulations are the key factors to promote degradable agricultural mulch films application. Second, the enhancement of the understanding of the knowledge of ecological value can effectively improve households' consciousness of using degradable agricultural mulch film. Third, to realize the sustainability of policies, households' risk attitude must be strengthened. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.