From Adoption to Use Intensity: Farm Machinery Use and Farmers’ Subjective Well-Being in Rural China

Agricultural mechanization reshapes production, yet its relationship with farmers’ subjective well-being remains unclear. Using data from 2079 crop-producing households in the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey, this study measures farm machinery use intensity as the mean mechanized area share across five production stages, incorporating household-owned machinery and outsourced services. Ordered logit estimates indicate a positive association that persists across alternative estimators and measures. Based on the average marginal effect, a one-standard-deviation increase in intensity corresponds, as a local approximation, to a 5.1-percentage-point higher probability of reporting “very happy.” Higher machinery use intensity is associated with lower household farm labor input per mu, higher per capita household income, and better self-rated health. Interaction tests support a stronger positive association among larger-scale households but do not establish differences by livestock production or age. These findings extend mechanization assessment from adoption to actual use intensity and highlight household welfare alongside production outcomes.