Adoption behavior of cultivated land ecological protection among family farms from the AMO theory perspective: A fuzzy-set QCA approach

Encouraging family farms to adopt cultivated land ecological protection behaviors is conducive to safeguarding China's food security, resource security, and ecological security. Existing studies have primarily focused on analyzing the impact of individual factors on cultivated land protection behaviors, with limited attention paid to the synergistic effects of multiple factors. Drawing upon the AMO (Ability-Motivation-Opportunity) framework, this study employs the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to explore the complex causal mechanisms that drive family farms to generate cultivated land ecological protection adoption behaviors. The findings are as follows: (1) No single antecedent condition constitutes a necessary condition for family farms to generate cultivated land ecological protection adoption behaviors. The adoption behavior of cultivated land ecological protection among family farms is the result of the interplay of multiple factors, including ability, motivation, and opportunity. (2) Two types of pathways drive family farms to generate high cultivated land ecological protection adoption behaviors, namely the "ability-opportunity driven" pathway and the "ability-motivation driven" pathway. (3) Peer effects play a crucial role in driving family farms to generate high cultivated land ecological protection adoption behaviors. In addition, there is a substitutive relationship between organizational support and self-efficacy. The findings of this study contribute to deepening the understanding of the complex causal mechanisms through which multiple factors interact to influence family farms' adoption behaviors of cultivated land ecological protection, and provide useful insights for stimulating such behaviors among family farms.