Place attachment, environmental cognition and organic fertilizer adoption of farmers: evidence from rural China.

For preventing the excessive consumption of agricultural resources, it is of vital importance to promote agricultural pro-environmental behavior of farmers. Despite the proven importance of psychological factors in encouraging farmers' adoption of organic fertilizer, the evidence is scarce. To fill this gap, this study aims to explore how place attachment and environmental cognition affect farmers' organic fertilizer adoption with a community sample of 944 rural farmers collected in Hubei province. Specifically, we firstly distinguish two dimensions of place attachment, namely, natural attachment and civic attachment, and then we explore the influence of those dimensions and environmental cognition on farmers' adoption of organic fertilizer. The results reveal that both place attachment and environmental cognition positively affect farmers' organic fertilizer adoption. Furthermore, the roles of place attachment vary across different groups divided by farmers' environmental cognition degree and age. Therefore, to promote green agricultural practices, policy-makers should enhance various farmers' place attachment and environmental cognition by strengthening infrastructure construction, organizing collective activities, and conducting animation propaganda.