Farmers’ willingness to adopt a time-shifted silvopastoral agroforestry system (tree–mushroom–poultry) in sweet cherry orchards: extension of TPB with labour constraints and perceived risk

Abstract Integrating a second productive enterprise into mature fruit orchards can raise output without expanding area, but orchard–livestock systems face a recurrent spatial conflict: ranging poultry damage fruit during the vulnerable phenological window, and the arrangements that resolve it require permanent infrastructure or wholesale rotation, neither of which suits smallholders. We examine a spatio-temporal rotation that turns this conflict into a scheduling problem: two plots alternate mushroom cultivation and poultry rearing on a half-year phase shift, with a whole-orchard exclusion window during flowering and fruit set and a movable partition fence re-installed without specialised equipment. Drawing on an extended theory of planned behaviour, we analyse survey data from 300 sweet cherry growers in Tai’an, Shandong, a traditional open-field area of northern China, using ordered logit models. Attitude ( β = 0.915), perceived behavioural control (0.806), subjective norms (0.531) and expected benefit (0.412) are positively associated with adoption willingness (all p ≤ 0.001), and perceived risk negatively so ( β = -0.410, p < 0.01). Labour constraints are insignificant overall ( β = -0.200, p = 0.109) but act conditionally on field type and grower age; mean willingness is moderate (3.377) and only 34.0% of growers are classified willing. Perceived behavioural control does not moderate the pathway ( β = -0.006, p = 0.969). Three implications follow: because the design is reversible, the salient drivers are evaluative and efficacy-related rather than financial; labour constraints bite at changeover rather than in annual averages; and the pattern should hold in other deciduous orchards where the same phenological constraint binds.