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It has been widely reported that the climate change represented by temperature increases and precipitation pattern changes is one of the key drivers of outbreaks of pests and diseases of plants. In addition, since the pests and diseases can diffuse spatially, the pest and disease outbreaks of certain sites are very likely to influence those of neighboring sites. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to elicit the causal relationship between climate factors and rice pest-disease damage rates, and to quantify the spatial spillover effects of rice pests and diseases. We construct the rice pest-disease damage models in consideration of spatial dependance of rice pests and diseases using a spatial panel tobit model. We use the site specific rice pest-disease damage data provided by Korea's Rural Development Administration from 1990 to 2015. The results show that the climatic conditions can significantly affect the rice pest-disease damages, but differently across the types of rice pests and diseases. We also found that there are significant spatial spillover effects (indirect effects) of rice pest-disease damages, and spatial spillover effects of pests are greater than those of diseases. |
