The Impact of Social Capital on Farmers’ Green Production Behavior: Moderation Effects Based on Agricultural Support and Protection Subsidies

Farmers’ green production behavior is key to addressing resource and environmental constraints and advancing agricultural green transformation, with social capital critically influencing their production decisions. However, rural population mobility amid urbanization and market economy penetration have reshaped farmers’ social interactions, reconstructing and differentiating social capital into distinct types. Few studies now focus on the complex link between this transformed social capital and farmers’ green production behavior. Moreover, though the government has long used agricultural subsidies to encourage green production, how these subsidies function when different social capital types affect green production remains unclear. To address the aforementioned issues, using 2022 CLES data and a binary logit model, this study examines how embedded and disembedded social capital influence farmers’ green production behavior and the moderating role of subsidies. Results show that (1) disembedded social capital has a significantly positive impact on farmers’ green production behavior, stronger than embedded social capital; (2) subsidies only positively moderate embedded social capital’s impact. The results have rich theoretical and practical implications, which can promote farmers’ adoption of green production behavior and accelerate the green transformation of agriculture.