Knowledge Intermediaries in State-Led Environmental Governance: Institutional Access, Social Embeddedness, and Uneven Outcomes in China’s Erhai Lake Basin

In China’s Erhai Lake basin, strict agricultural pollution control policies have reduced ecological degradation but severely disrupted smallholder livelihoods, creating an urgent need for institutional actors capable of mediating between state mandates and rural communities. This study examines Science and Technology Backyards (STBs), university-based knowledge intermediaries, as a distinctive governance mechanism embedded within China’s state-led environmental governance system. Drawing on 60 days of ethnographic fieldwork and 33 semi-structured interviews with 36 participants in Gusheng Village, Dali City, we develop a socio-technical institutional framework that conceptualizes STB effectiveness as depending on the joint operation of three dimensions: technological rationality, social embeddedness, and institutional access. Empirically, the findings show that STBs operate through three bridging mechanisms: technical correction, power adjustment, and market linkage. However, their influence is structurally uneven. Vertically, STB engagement is strong at the prefectural level but weakens sharply at township and village levels. Horizontally, technology diffusion concentrates in core villages and disproportionately benefits large-scale farmers over smallholders. Market linkage remains the weakest mechanism due to deep institutional deficits in cooperative development, supply chain infrastructure, and state–market coordination. These findings contribute to understanding how knowledge intermediaries produce uneven governance outcomes within hierarchical political systems.