ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agroecology and Ecosystem Services
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1633639
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Soil Health and Climate Resilience through Sustainable Agricultural PracticesView all 12 articles
The Influence of Household Head's Skill Level and Digital agricultural outreach on Farmers' Adoption of Conservation Tillage Technology: An Empirical Study Based on Northwestern China
Provisionally accepted
- 1Gansu University of Political Science and Law, Lanzhou, China
- 2School of Economics and Management, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China, Yinchuan, China
- 3College of Economics and Management, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China
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In the digital economy era, aligning farmers' skill levels with advanced technologies is crucial for advancing agricultural informatization, and exploring the interaction between skill levels and digital promotion holds important policy value for optimizing conservation tillage technology extension strategies. Using survey data from 487 farm households in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, key melon and fruit-producing regions in Northwest China, this study constructs a composite skill index and conducts robustness tests to examine the combined effects of skill levels and digital promotion on the adoption of conservation tillage technologies. The findings show that higher skill levels significantly increase the adoption probability of subsoiling, integrated pest management (IPM), and organic fertilizer application. In terms of digital tools, mobile phone usage significantly promotes the adoption of subsoiling, IPM, and organic fertilizer, while computer usage only has a significant impact on organic fertilizer adoption. Additionally, digital promotion plays an intermediary role in the relationship between skill levels and technology adoption, and there is a substitution effect between mobile phone and computer usage in promoting the adoption of IPM, organic fertilizer, and straw mulching. These results provide policy insights: differentiated promotion of digital tools based on their functional characteristics, targeted support for elderly farmers to bridge the digital divide, and strengthened synergy between skills and digital tools can effectively enhance the penetration of conservation tillage technologies, which is of great significance for advancing agricultural green development and narrowing the urban-rural digital gap.
Keywords: skill level, Digital Agricultural outreach, conservation tillage technology, mediation effect, Substitution effect
Received: 22 May 2025; Accepted: 21 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ding, Lipeng, Lu and Bai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Li Lipeng, School of Economics and Management, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China, Yinchuan, China
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