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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Towards a Sustainable Environment:
Understanding Chinese Farmers’
Adoption of Renewable Energy Sources
Through Green Intentions
1
School of Logistics, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610103, China
2
School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
3
School of Banking and Finance, University of International Business and Economics; Beijing, 100029, China
4
School of Business Administration and Customs Affairs, Shanghai Customs College, Shanghai 201204, China
5
Department of Economics, Division of management and Administrative Science,
University of Education Lahore, Pakistan
Submission date: 2024-01-05
Final revision date: 2024-03-01
Acceptance date: 2024-04-08
Online publication date: 2024-07-19
Publication date: 2025-01-09
Corresponding author
Qi Gao
School of School of Business Administration and Customs Affairs, Shanghai Customs College, Shanghai, China, China
School of School of Business Administration and Customs Affairs, Shanghai Customs College, Shanghai, China, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2025;34(2):1425-1437
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Renewable energy is absolutely necessary in order to stop the deterioration of the environment and
to guarantee reliable access to environmentally friendly energy sources. Based on the conformity theory,
logistic regression, propensity score matching, and stepwise regression are all used in the current study
to investigate the mediating role of green intentions in the conformity tendencies of Chinese farmers’
adoption of renewable energy sources. This research was motivated by the notion of the dissemination
of innovations as well as the technological adoption model, and it aims to shed light on how individuals
are socialized and how green intentions mediate their conformity tendencies to adopt renewable energy
sources. The results revealed that the average age of the farmers was 42 years, and they were primary
school graduates. More than 50% were male. Almost 26% of farmers reported that they use renewable
energy sources on their farms. Generally, the farmers were green intended and would like to adopt
renewable energy sources. The regression results disclosed a significant impact of socially inspired peer
adoption (p<0.01) on the farmers’ adoption of renewable energy sources. Renewable energy adoption
is impacted more by the adoption of strong connections than by the adoption of renewable energy by
weak relations, which means that farmers are more likely to adopt renewable energy if their peers also
do so. Nevertheless, the extent to which farmers have green intentions regarding the use of renewable
energy technology had a significant influence on the farmers’ conformity tendencies, influenced by the
different intensities of their social networks.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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