Chemical Fertilizer Abatement and Ecological Compensation in China’s Northeast Black Soil Region: An Assessment with a Fertilization Balance Equivalence Framework

Overreliance on fiscal support policy instruments to improve cultivated land fertility poses a challenge to the sustainable supply capacity of government ecological compensation funds, especially given the limited scope for market-based implementation. To address this, it is necessary to further examine and optimize the effectiveness of existing ecological compensation schemes. Using field survey data from 612 rice farm households across three provinces in Northeast China’s black soil region, we constructed an equivalent ecological compensation framework for “chemical fertilizer (CF) abatement to fertilization balance (FB)” grounded in the logic of ecological increment and abatement processes, and evaluated the performance of China’s Cultivated Land Productivity Subsidies. The results reveal that the environmental cost per unit of CF input in this region is 40.6 CNY/kg, with a regional fertilization balance standard (FBS) of 20.04 kg/mu. Owing to the heterogeneity in farmers’ fertilization practices, the actual rate of excessive CF application (RECFA) (101.5%) is notably higher than the statistical estimate of 78%, indicating that the scale of overapplication has been systematically underestimated. Yet with its uniform per mu subsidy standard and a policy design that targets ecological compensation at landowners, the government directs a share of subsidy funds to land transferors who bear no CF abatement responsibilities. This, in turn, deepens the mismatch between farmers’ CF abatement efforts and the ecological compensation they receive. At the regional level, the current subsidy of 122.1 CNY/mu drives only a 13.42% abatement in CF application, while achieving full FB would require a subsidy of 552.7 CNY/mu. This points to a clear shortfall in aggregate support and an appreciable gap between current policy inputs and actual CF abatement demand. These findings provide empirical support for the ecological compensation assessment framework based on the equivalence between CF abatement and FB. The dual-level analysis across regional and household scales offers practical references for optimizing black soil conservation subsidy policies in Northeast China.