Evaluation of the Effect of Pesticide Packaging Waste Recycling: From Economic and Ecological Perspectives

Evaluating the effect of recycling Pesticide Packaging Waste (PPW) is essential for improving recycling rates, which plays a crucial role in controlling environmental pollution and optimizing the efficiency of agricultural resources worldwide. Based on the micro-survey data of 1223 farmers in Yunnan and Hainan provinces of China, this study measures the economic effect by the farmers’ annual total household income and the ecological effect by the ecological environment quality of villages. The propensity score matching method (PSM) is employed to empirically test the economic and ecological effects of farmers’ recycling behavior of PPW and their differences. The research findings are as follows: Farmers’ recycling of PPW can generate significant positive economic and ecological effects, which are 116.7% and 4%, respectively. The heterogeneity analysis shows that farmers with a low degree of land fragmentation have a more obvious economic effect from PPW recycling, while farmers with a higher degree of land fragmentation have a more significant ecological effect; farmers with high pesticide costs have more significant economic and ecological effects from PPW recycling. Based on these findings, it is suggested to increase the attention at the policy level, enhance farmers’ environmental awareness and capacity, and focus on the characteristics of different groups.