Impact of digital capabilities on farmers’ pesticide application intensity: Analysis based on CRRS microscopic survey data

In the context of the digital economy, digital capability is an important skill for farmers to acquire and utilize information resources. This capability plays a crucial role in promoting pesticide use reduction and efficiency improvement as well as accelerating the green transformation of agricultural development. This study, therefore, constructed a theoretical analysis framework to examine the impact of farmers’ digital capability on pesticide application intensity. It revealed the pathways through which the digital capability of farmers affect pesticide application intensity, thereby offering crucial insights and serving as an important reference for enhancing green and high-quality agricultural development. Based on the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS) Database, this study constructed a digital capability index system specifically for farmers. The multiple linear regression models and mechanism testing models were used to explore the impact of farmers’ digital capability on pesticide application intensity. The innovation of this study lay in the use of a factor analysis method to construct a digital capability indicator system for farmers based on three dimensions — digital access condition, digital resources demand, and digital application capability. A total of 13 secondary indicators were selected to characterize farmers’ digital capability, which can effectively address the limitations of existing researched that relied solely on single indicators, such as Internet or cell phone access, as proxy variables for digital capability. This approach can provide a reference for future studies. The results indicated the following: First, the improvement of digital ability can significantly reduce the intensity of pesticide application by farmers, and this conclusion still held after considering endogeneity issues and conducting a series of robustness tests. Second, the three dimensions of digital access condition, digital resources demand, and digital application capability significantly reduced the intensity of pesticide application by farmers. Specifically, the impact of digital resources demand was greater than those of digital access condition and digital application capability, and the comprehensive measurement of the impact of digital capability was much greater than that of a single dimension. Third, the mechanism analysis results indicated that digital capability significantly reduced farmers’ pesticide application intensity through three pathways — pesticide machinery operation, organizational capability optimization, and ecological literacy improvement. Fourth, the heterogeneity analysis results indicated that the improvement in farmers’ digital capability had a more significant impact on the reduction in pesticide application intensity among famers in elderly group, small scale planting group, and ordinary village. Based on these conclusions, this study proposed the following policy recommendations: to accelerate the construction of digital rural areas and ensure the full coverage of digital infrastructure and information service systems, to establish a cultivation system to enhance the digital capability of farmers, and to improve farmers’ digital capability.