The sample areas in this study are located in the potato production areas, and they are good representatives of the major potato-growing areas in northern China.

Using the three-round micro survey data collected in 2007, 2012, and 2017, we analyze the way in which the digital groundwater supervision pilot improved farmers’ adoption of WSI technology decisions in China. In addition, village supervision, information, and cooperative incentives positively encourage farmers to adopt WSI technologies. The results, which were based on a unique plot-crop-level panel dataset, indicate that farmers reduced water use after the pilot implementation, with most of the responses created through introducing water-saving technology and reducing water use intensity rather than through reducing irrigated acreage. A difference-in-differences (DID) strategy is applied to address the treatment effect of the digital groundwater supervision pilot.

By utilizing this recent pilot in rural China, we assess the causal impact of the digital groundwater supervision pilot on farmers’ water-saving irrigation (WSI) behaviors and investigate the heterogeneity effects and mechanisms related to the policy contents. This study estimates how farmers respond to a pilot on digital groundwater supervision, which was implemented by the county government to limit the number and clarify property rights of irrigation borewells. Digital technology has the potential to mitigate the groundwater over-exploitation problem by precisely restricting agriculture groundwater withdrawal and borewell construction.

Groundwater depletion caused by agricultural irrigation is a worldwide problem.

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