A study on the impact of operational efficiency of policy-oriented agricultural insurance on farmers’ income: evidence from major grain-producing areas in China

Introduction Ensuring food security and stabilizing farmers’ income are very important for China’s development, and policy-oriented agricultural insurance is an important risk management tool led by the government. Its operational efficiency plays a key role in effectively transforming the financial subsidy and insurance mechanism into the real income security for farmers, but its impact on the efficiency transmission mechanism has not been fully investigated. Methods This study constructed a mediating moderating effect model based on the farm household economic behavior theory. The model covers factors such as operational efficiency of policy-oriented agricultural insurance, regional fiscal subsidy capacity, degree of agricultural disaster and farmers’ income. We use panel data from 13 provinces in China between 2019 and 2022 and adopt fixed effects model to evaluate the impact of policy-based agricultural insurance on the above dimensions. To ensure the reliability of the results, we conduct a robustness test. Results We found that the operational efficiency of policy-oriented agricultural insurance improved farmers’ income. Its impact is significant in the degree of agricultural disaster and the ability of regional financial subsidies. The lower the degree of agricultural disaster, the greater the positive impact of operational efficiency of policy-oriented agricultural insurance on farmers’ income. In addition, the capacity of regional subsidies plays an intermediary role between the operational efficiency of policy-oriented agricultural insurance and farmers’ income. The lower the degree of agricultural disaster, the more positive impact of regional fiscal subsidy capacity and farmers’ income. Discussion These results suggest that policy-oriented agricultural insurance plays a crucial role in ensuring food security and stabilizing farm household income. We suggest optimizing the allocation of financial resources for policy-oriented agricultural insurance and implementing differentiated regional support policies to more effectively stabilize farmers’ income and ensure food security.