Impact of social capital on farmers' response to different policies for controlling agricultural non-point source pollution

Chinese society in rural areas is typically a geographically and genetically related society.Scattered farmers can be connected to form small groups through their social capital,which can affect farmers’ agricultural activities in the process of controlling agricultural Non-point Source pollution.An ordered Logit model can be built to analyze the effects of social capital to farmers’ responsive willingness to different measurements of controlling agricultural NPS pollution by using survey data in Shaanxi Province.This paper characterizes farmers’ social capital in three dimensions:social trust,social participation and social network.The results indicated that farmers’ social capital significantly affects farmers’ response to different policies.When governments construct and implement policies to control agricultural NPS pollution,the effects of social capital need to be considered at same time with the effects of governmental supervision,market and education measurements.