How do rural households accept straw returning in Northeast China?

The straw returning technology has emerged to fill gaps in today's agricultural waste recycling and reuse. The goals of straw returning technology are to enable crop straw to decompose in soil to increase soil fertility and reduce air pollution. While the concept of straw returning has the potential to promote environmental sustainability, the successful implementation of straw returning highly depends on the satisfaction of rural households' motivational needs towards technology acceptance. This study posits a novel theoretical acceptance model for straw returning technology that integrated the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and Norm Activation Model and systematically examines the factors affecting the acceptance of straw returning technology. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey among rural households was conducted for data collection in Northeast China, China's important grain production base. Partial least square structural equation modeling was used to test the effectiveness of the proposed acceptance model. Multi-group analyses were performed to examine whether the results were different or equivalent across different factors (e.g., education level, usage experience, and crop type). The results show that our model explains 83.2% of the variance in behavioral intention to use straw returning technology. Intention to use was positively affected by performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, personal norms, the ascription of responsibility directly, and effort expectancy indirectly. No significant effects of awareness of consequences on intention to use were found, and personal norms presented the largest total effects on behavioral intention. In addition, several hypothesized relations differed across rural households' characteristics and experience.