Perceived risk, environmental attitude and fertilizer application by vegetable farmers in China

Abstract In this study, we investigated the impact of three different perceived risk and environmental attitude on the fertilizer reduction behavior in vegetable production and the interplay between perceived risk and environmental attitude. We found that perceived economic risk can exert a significant and negative effect on farmers’ fertilizer reduction behavior (−0.39) and perceived social and psychological risks has a relatively weak negative impact with coefficients of −0.25 and −0.23, respectively. A more friendly environmental attitude can significantly and positively affect farmers’ fertilizer reduction behavior. Furthermore, environmental attitude has a moderating effect on the association between perceived risk and farmer’s fertilizer reduction behavior, but just significant for economic and social risk. In other words, a better environmental attitude could reduce the negative effect of perceived risk. This study promoted our new understanding of the risk perception’s impact on farmers’ behavior.