Does Ecological Planting–Breeding Mix Pattern Improve Farmers’ Subjective Well-Being? Evidence from the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River

The Chinese government is making vigorous efforts to control agricultural pollution. The promotion of an ecological planting–breeding mix pattern is one of them. Farmers’ mode of production will affect their subjective well-being. Thus, this paper aims to analyze the impact of adopting the ecological planting–breeding mix pattern on farmers’ subjective well-being based on 895 pieces of survey data from the provinces of Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Using the endogenous switching regression model, we find that the adoption of the ecological planting–breeding mix pattern has a significant positive effect on farmers’ subjective well-being. Based on this counterfactual hypothesis, if the farmers who actually adopted the ecological planting–breeding mix pattern did not adopt it, their subjective well-being would decrease from 4.006 to 3.669. Further examination indicates that self-worth identification, income increase, and neighborhood communication could be potential mechanisms. Additionally, the effect of the ecological planting–breeding mix pattern on subjective well-being is stronger in the group with low financial support. The technical support provided by the government does not have a significant regulatory effect on the adoption of the ecological planting–breeding mix pattern on subjective well-being. Our results suggest that farmers’ ecological production behavior can affect their subjective well-being. This may be relevant to many developing countries today that are attempting to adopt ecological agriculture patterns.