Analysis of dispersed farmers’ willingness to grow grain and main influential factors based on the structural equation model

Abstract Grain is not only the basic living materials of urban and rural residents, but an important strategic resource related to the national security. Therefore, grain security is an important aspect of national security. Farmers' willingness to grow grain is the key factor to guarantee food security. Based on the structural equation model, the main factors that influence the farmers' willingness to grow grain were studied in this paper by investigating 486 dispersed farmers in six counties (cities, districts) of three prefecture-level cities in Shandong Province. The study indicated that aside from the difficulty of measuring the influence of personal characteristic factors, the national grain subsidy policies, grain price, grain planting scale, other farmers' production behaviors, and promotion of agricultural technology affected the farmers' willingness to grow grain in varying degrees. Further regional multi-group analyses demonstrated that the farmers' willingness to grow grain showed an increasing trend from east to west in Shandong Province. Additionally, grain subsidy policies and family characteristic factors had obvious regional differences on the farmers' willingness to grow grain. Therefore, optimizing and improving the national grain subsidy policies, encouraging the management of a moderate scale, stabilizing prices of grain, increasing the propaganda of agricultural information and promoting agricultural technology were the key factors to increase the farmers' willingness to grow grain.