Effects of haze pollution on pesticide use by rice farmers: fresh evidence from rural areas of China.

Recently, severe haze pollution has not only threatened human health and food security, but also seems to have aggravated the unscientific use of pesticides by rice farmers in rural areas of China. Using original data on haze pollution across China, combined with rural household survey data collected from 2014 to 2018, we conducted a detailed empirical study on the effects of haze pollution on pesticide use by rice farmers based on the theory of risk aversion. The empirical results revealed that haze pollution with higher levels of PM positively impacted the use of chemical pesticides in rice cultivation. More precisely, with each 100% increase in PM concentrations, the use of pesticide per mu increased by 7.9%, and the average pesticide cost per mu increased by 2.3%. The results were robust to a series of tests that addressed potential endogeneity concerns, including omitted variable bias, measurement error, and reverse causality. We then examined the heterogeneous effects of haze pollution increases on the use of chemical pesticides and found that for rice farmers without rice insurance, haze pollution has a stronger effect on pesticide use and a weaker effect on pesticide cost. However, for rice farmers with more experience in rice cultivation and small-scale rice planting, the effect of haze pollution on pesticide use and cost is relatively small. Our findings provide important policy implications for pesticide risk management in rural areas of developing countries.