Table 1.

Definition of variables and descriptive statistics.

Variables	Definition	Mean	Standard deviation
Explained variables
Pesticide expenditure	Pesticide expenditure per unit of cropland area (yuan/mu)	180.327	672.475
Insecticide expenditure	Insecticide expenditure per unit of cropland area (yuan/mu)	136.120	598.004
Herbicide expenditure	Herbicide expenditure per unit of cropland area (yuan/mu)	44.207	133.735
Pesticide use	Pesticide use per unit of cropland area (kg/mu)	7.229	27.018
Core explanatory variable
Agricultural mechanization services	Whether to rent agricultural machinery: Yes = 1, No = 0	0.631	0.483
Control variables
Age	The age in 2017	46.986	18.040
Gender	Male =1, female =0	0.515	0.500
Educational level	High school education or above: Yes = 1, No = 0	0.187	0.390
Health status	1 = Very good, 2 = Good, 3 = Fair, 4 = Poor, 5 = Very poor	2.723	1.093
Agricultural labor force	The average number of laborers during busy farming and non-busy farming seasons	1.877	0.767
Household income	Disposable household income in 2017 (10000 yuan)	5.304	6.502
Cultivated land scale	Cultivated land area (mu)	11.565	22.151
Number of land plots	Number of land plots	6.239	6.742
Agricultural subsidies	1=Received agricultural subsidies, 0=No	0.765	0.424
Self-owned agricultural machinery	1 = Yes, 0 = No	0.520	0.500
Hired laborers	1 = Yes, 0 = No	0.148	0.355
Purchasing agricultural supplies through e-commerce platforms	1 = Yes, 0 = No	0.188	0.391
Distance from village	Distance in kilometers from the nearest township to the village (km)	6.997	6.341
Per capita income of village	Per capita disposable income of rural residents in the village (10,000 yuan)	0.709	0.573
Economic crops ratio in the village.	The economic crop planting area ratio in the village (as a percentage)	33.885	31.350
Instrumental variables
Village agricultural mechanization services	The proportion of agricultural mechanization service samples in the village (excluding this sample)	0.606	0.322