Multi-path Driven by Farmers' Adoption Behavior of Dry Farming Green Agricultural Technology in Loess Plateau from the Perspective of Trust Theory — A Study Based on fsQCA

Enhancing farmers' performance in embracing novel green agricultural technologies in the arid Loess Plateau regions holds significant potential for boosting agricultural productivity, augmenting farmers' income, and fostering environmental and ecological benefits in local agricultural production. Drawing upon interviews with 488 farmers, this study utilizes the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to establish an integrative model encompassing willingness, value trust, external technology institutional trust, and adoption performance enhancement. The model unravels the conditional configurations and diverse pathways wherein value trust and institutional trust factors influence farmers' adoption of new green agricultural technology. The findings indicate that a singular behavioral decision-making factor is not a prerequisite for farmers to effectively adopt new green agricultural technologies. Instead, the interplay of multiple decision-making factors culminates in three distinct types of farmer technology adoption performance. These conditional configurations are classified as endowment will-dominance mode, internal and external joint constraint mode, and external context-dominant mode. This research not only offers a fresh analytical perspective for studying the enhancement of farmers' adoption behavior of green agricultural technology on the Loess Plateau, but also serves as a crucial theoretical and practical reference for fostering high-quality agricultural development in the region.