Digital technology and pesticide reduction in rural households: Mechanisms and heterogeneity

Using micro-level data from the 2022 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS), this study used the ordinary least squares model to examine how digital technology influences rural households’ pesticide use decisions, with a focus on their underlying mechanisms and contextual heterogeneity. The results indicate that digital technology applications significantly promote rural households’ pesticide reduction. Moreover, digital technology has a significant pesticide-reducing effect, but this effect varies by pesticide category, with stronger reductions observed for fungicides and herbicides than for insecticides. Mechanism analysis reveals that farm size negatively moderates digital technologies’ pesticide-reducing effect. Although agricultural social services can reduce pesticide use, they do not cultivate a synergistic effect with digital technologies. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that digital technologies only reduce rural households’ pesticide use in villages without green or organic product certification. These findings provide evidence-based insights into the contextual function of digital innovation in agriculture, offering empirical grounding for targeted policy design to advance high-quality and ecologically resilient farming systems.