Unveiling the effect of social networks on farmers' diversified energy-saving behaviors in the Tibetan plateau region of China.

Abstract

An improved comprehension of the factors that influence farmers' diversified energy-saving behaviors makes significant sense for enacting potent energy policies and curbing rural energy consumption. This paper investigated the effect of social networks on diversified energy-saving behaviors adopted by farmers in the Tibetan Plateau region of China, by establishing a generalized Poisson regression model. A total of 480 farmers were randomly interviewed. The results indicate that farmers' social networks were relatively abundant in the study area, and the diversified energy-saving behaviors exhibited good performance at the overall level. Farmers' social networks are of paramount importance in the execution of diversified energy-saving behaviors. In particular, the scale and frequency of social networks are instrumental in the success of the implementation of diversified energy-saving behaviors. Farmers' sociodemographic characteristics, including gender, education level, household size, and residential housing area, also facilitate their adoption of diversified energy-saving behaviors. The findings contribute to the further exploration of the value of social networks in determining environmental actions in rural areas and provide an effective basis for policy formulation to save energy consumption in similar regions in other countries.