Peer effects, attention allocation and farmers' adoption of cleaner production technology: Taking green control techniques as an example

As a typical clean production technology, green control techniques and their adoption are influenced by peer effects. Thus, what is the formation mechanism of the peer effects? Will there be a heterogeneous impact due to differences in the social network position of farmers? Will this impact be moderated by attention allocation? To answer these questions, based on the survey data for 1109 farmers in five provinces on the North China Plain, this paper adopted the IV-Probit model and other research methods. We found peer effects in the adoption behavior of green control techniques among farmers, which only existed in core and intermediate farmers and not in marginal farmers. The peer effects of the farmers' adoption behavior of green control techniques mainly came from the learning imitation mechanism. With the enhancement of farmers' attention allocation, the peer effects of farmers' adoption behavior of green control techniques strengthened. Therefore, it is necessary to give full consideration to the positive role of peer effects on farmers, improve the attention allocation level of farmers, and provide the service resources for agricultural technology extension to marginal farmers to accelerate the diffusion of green control techniques.