The Impact of Female Household Status on Decision-Making in Digital and Intelligent Production Transformation: A Case Study of Plant Protection Drone Adoption

Investigating the influence of women’s family status on farmers’ adoption of digital and intelligent production transformation holds significant value in bridging the gender gap in research on modern agricultural production transformation and in facilitating the digital and intelligent transformation of the agricultural sector. Drawing on survey data from Henan Province collected through a household survey conducted in July 2024 by the research team, which employed a combination of stratified and random sampling, and focusing on farmers’ adoption of plant protection drone technology, this paper employs the Triple-Hurdle model to examine the impact of women’s family status on farmers’ digital and intelligent production transformation decisions and the underlying mechanisms. The baseline regression results show that the improvement of women’s family status facilitates farmers’ digital and intelligent production transformation decisions. Specifically, it enhances farmers’ willingness to adopt digital and intelligent production transformation, promotes their adoption behavior of plant protection drone technology, and increases the degree of adoption of such technology. The mechanism analysis reveals that the improvement of women’s family status promotes farmers’ digital and intelligent production transformation decisions by increasing their satisfaction with the institutional environment. The heterogeneity analysis of household characteristics indicates that women’s family status has a greater facilitating effect on the willingness of farmers with lower female labor force participation and those with heavier child or elderly dependency burdens to undergo digital and intelligent production transformation. The heterogeneity analysis of village environmental characteristics shows that women’s family status has a greater facilitating effect on the willingness and behavior of farmers in villages with a larger number of technical personnel to undergo digital and intelligent production transformation. Additionally, it has a greater facilitating effect on the willingness of farmers in villages with a stronger culture of gender equality to undergo such transformation. Using plant protection drone adoption as an example, this paper provides preliminary evidence of the positive impact of women’s family status on the digital and intelligent transformation of agriculture. However, due to the inherent limitations of cross-sectional data, our exploration of the dynamic process of transformation remains inadequate. Therefore, future research is warranted to employ longitudinal panel data to further validate the findings of this study.