Investigating the Relationship between Land and Labor Endowments and Agricultural Mechanization among Chinese Farmers

China maintains a steady yield increase in the past three decades, but farm production is undergoing a great change, especially in the recent decade, due to the change in both economic conditions and the environment along with a sharp decline of rural labor and farming population. Agricultural mechanization, especially agricultural mechanization services (AMS), gains its popularity in recent years. This study examines the adoption of agricultural mechanization, using either self-equipped machinery or AMS; and the factors contributing to the adoption of different types of agricultural mechanization. The empirical analysis uses primary survey data and employs a seemingly unrelated regression model. We find that the agricultural labor endowment improves the adoption of agricultural mechanization, but off-farm labor curbs the adoption. In terms of the land endowment, we find an inverse U-shaped non-linear relationship between the land endowment and the AMS adoption, and land fragmentation reduces the mechanization adoption.