Maintenance Skill Training Gives Agricultural Socialized Service Providers More Advantages

Abstract

Agricultural machinery maintenance skill training is conducive to improving the fault diagnosis and maintenance levels of agricultural machinery for agricultural socialized service providers and plays an important role in providing stable and reliable agricultural machinery operation services. This paper aims to study whether maintenance skill training gives agricultural socialized service providers more advantages than untrained providers, exploring the relationship between maintenance skill training and agricultural machinery service area. Based on a survey of 4905 farmers from 10 provinces in China, an empirical analysis was carried out using a fixed effect model and a propensity score matching method. The results showed the following: First, maintenance skill training had a significant positive impact on agricultural machinery operation service area, including 10.426 ha of machinery tilling service area and 8.524 ha of machinery harvesting service area. Second, since maintenance skill training gave agricultural socialized service providers more advantages in agricultural machinery operation services and enabled them to obtain more orders, it had an indirect positive impact on the quantity of demand for large- and middle-sized agricultural machinery.