Determinants and impacts of outsourcing pest and disease management: Evidence from China’s rice production
China Agricultural Economic Review
ISSN: 1756-137X
Article publication date: 7 August 2018
Issue publication date: 22 August 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants and impacts of outsourcing pest and disease management on rice production in China.
Design/methodology/approach
A multinomial endogenous treatment effects model which accounts for selection bias was used.
Findings
The results show that outsourcing decisions are driven mainly by the size of the farm, the age of the household head and other household characteristics. Further, the authors find that outsourcing labor for pest and disease control has no significant effect on pest control cost and rice yields, though it reduces the number of pesticide applications. Conversely, outsourcing of professional services can increase rice yields by 4.1 percent, and at the same time it increases pest and disease control costs by 50.6 percent. However, it is found that outsourcing of professional services exerts no significant impact on the farm profitability.
Practical implications
This study suggests that households with large farm size are more likely to outsource professional services and, therefore, service providers and governments should target those farmers to provide incentives and create greater awareness of the benefits from the outsourcing of professional services. Moreover, the increase in yields along with the government subsidy justifies the outsourcing of professional services by farmers. However, service providers and policy makers have a lot of leeway to come up with cheaper methods for pest and disease management in rice production.
Originality/value
This study is the first attempt to simultaneously evaluate the determinants and impacts of outsourcing pest and disease management on rice production in China.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos 71473122, 71333008 and 71573133) and a project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD). The authors thank Zixi Feng, Yutong Lu, Songcheng Zheng, Yue Jiang and Qi Wang for their help in the data collection. The authors would also like to thank Professor Stephan von Cramon-Taubadel from the University of Göttingen, Germany, Professor Fujin Yi from Nanjing Agricultural University, China and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. The authors are solely responsible for any error and omission.
Citation
Sun, D., Rickaille, M. and Xu, Z. (2018), "Determinants and impacts of outsourcing pest and disease management: Evidence from China’s rice production", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 443-461. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-01-2017-0011
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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