Effect of environmental regulations and village regulations on farmers' green production willingness: Taking the resource use of livestock and poultry waste of large-scale pig farmers as an example

Pollution from pig breeding is a major contributor to agricultural pollution. However, existing environmental regulations have limited role, because it may not be well integrated into local informal system. This paper considers the environmental regulations to the farmers' willingness of green production and innovatively adds the village regulations, using large-scale pig farmers in Hubei Province as the research object as well as the structural equation model to study the influence of environmental regulations and village regulations on pig farmers' willingness to recycle livestock and poultry waste, and explore the mechanism of the influence of formal institutions and informal institutional factors on the willingness of large-scale pig farmers to use resources. The findings reveal that:1) environmental regulations have a significant positive effect on large-scale pig farmers' willingness; 2) village regulations have a significant positive effect on large-scale pig farmers' willingness; and 3) village regulations play an intermediary role in the impact of environmental regulations on large-scale pig farmers' willingness to use these resources. Restrictive environmental regulations have an indirect effect on the willingness of large-scale pig farmers to use these resources through normative village regulations, and guiding environmental regulations have an indirect effect on this willingness through cultural village regulations. Based on these findings, this study proposed the following policy implications. In the process of rural environmental governance, the government should improve the environmental regulations, standardize the village rules and regulations, and give full play to the advantages of both in practice, so as to make the environmental regulations "propriety" and the village rules and regulations "reasonable".