Influence of a new agricultural technology extension mode on farmers' technology adoption behavior in China

With the development of Internet information technology and portable mobile terminals, a new agricultural technology extension mode has emerged that uses new media such as WeChat public accounts and apps. However, empirical studies on the effectiveness of the new agricultural technology extension mode have not been reported. To compensate for the shortage of existing research, this article uses survey data from 759 peasant households in Shandong Province and Henan Province to measure soil fertilizer technology, water-saving irrigation techniques and the prevention and control of plant diseases and insect pests through green technology. A score matching method is used to explore new agricultural technology extension modes for farmers' direct effects and spillover effects from technology adoption behavior as well as distribution effects. A robustness inspection instrumental variable method is used to identify the effectiveness of the new agricultural technology extension mode and provide extensive information to evaluate the effectiveness of the analytical framework. The study finds that the new agricultural technology extension mode improves the technology adoption level of farmers to a certain extent with a partial spillover effect, and farmers of different ages and with different sizes of farmland benefit differently. When guiding farmers to use the new agricultural technology extension mode, it is important to consider the information diffusion among farmers who have already adopted this mode and to disseminate this information to elderly and small-scale farmers.