Farmer’s adoption tendency towards drought shock, risk-taking networks and modern irrigation technology: evidence from Zhangye, Gansu, PRC

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to measure Farmer’s adoption tendency towards drought shock, risk-taking networks and modern irrigation technology. Design/methodology/approach Based on this assumption, this paper evaluated the data gathered from 498 household surveys of Zhangye, Gansu province, PRC, by using the binary probit model. First, the empirical data was analyzed for evaluating the impact of drought shock and risk-taking tendencies on the adoption of modern irrigation technology by farmers. Second, the authors introduced informal risk-bearing networks with formal risks. Final, based on the empirical results, the sustainability test, along with the marginal effect analysis and the degree of impact was carried out. Findings The results show that the drought shock has a significantly deferent effect on the modern irrigation technology of the farmers. The probability of using technology for each level of drought loss is reduced by 15.02%. The risk-taking network has a significant role in promoting the modern irrigation technology of farmers. The probability of adoption for each additional unit of rural household labor security supply, the likelihood of adoption by farmers increased 23.11%, the probability of approval for each level of relative support, and neighborhood assistance by farmers increased by 13.11% and 17.88% respectively. This study further revealed that insurance purchases enabled farmers to adopt new irrigation technology with the probability increased by 24.99%; easily available bank loans increased the probability of farmers using irrigation technology by 31.89%. From the perspective of interactions between farmers, the risk-taking network can alleviate the inhibitory effect of drought impact towards the adoption of irrigation technology. Among the control variables, the number of years of education, the age of farming, the degree of arable land, the distance from home to the market, and the price of water all has significant effects on the adoption of modern irrigation technology by farmers. Originality/value The novelty of the study is that it illustrated the interactive influence of drought shock and risk-taking networks on the farmer’s adoption tendencies of modern irrigation technologies, the inner relationship among drought impact, the risk-taking network and the farmer’s adoption behavior and provide an interactive relationship between the formal risk-taking network and the non-risk-taking network in farmer’s technology adoption.