The Impact of Social Capital on Farmers’ Farmland Quality Protection Behavior: Evidence from the Main Rice-Producing Areas in Southern China

Farmland quality protection is an important measure to implement the strategy of “storing grain in the land” and a vital part of promoting ecological agriculture development. This study focuses on the main agents of farmland quality protection, farmers, with a sample of 1013 households from the rice-growing areas of Jiangxi Province, which is one of the major rice-growing provinces in southern China. We used an Ordered Probit model, a mediation effect model, and a moderation effect model to analyze the influence and mechanism of farmers’ social capital and structure on their farmland quality protection behavior. The result shows that: (1) Social capital significantly promotes the farmers’ farmland quality protection behaviors. The promoting effect of bonding social capital is greater than that of linking social capital. These conclusions remain robust after the endogeneity issue has been addressed and robustness tests have been conducted; (2) Ecological cognition plays a mediating role in this relation, while Internet use exerts a significant positive moderating effect; (3) The effect of social capital is greater for full-time farming households than for part-time farming households, and more significant for risk-neutral and risk-seeking farmers than for risk-averse farmers. Accordingly, this study proposes recommendations, including fostering farmers’ social capital, improving their ecological cognition, promoting the penetration and use of the Internet, vigorously cultivating new agricultural business entities, and expanding agricultural insurance coverage.