Abstract: Under the background of new economic normal and tea consumption returning to rationality, improving tea productivity has important practical significance for promoting the high-quality development of tea industry. Based on the micro data from 2011 to 2017, the stochastic frontier production function was used to analyze the growth and sources of total factor productivity (TFP) for tea growers, and the micro-pool data from 2013 to 2016 and “one-step” stochastic frontier production function were also used to analyze the technical efficiency and its determinants of tea growers, with particular attention to the impacts of different technology diffusion paths and technology adoption behavior on technical efficiency. The results show: (1) during the study period, the TFP of tea growers increased by an average of 2.71% per year and showed an increasing trend, but it has obvious regional characteristics of high in the West and low in the East. (2) The average annual rate of return to scale and technological progress of tea growers decreased by 0.25% and 1.50%, and their technological efficiency increased by 4.46%. It shows that the main driving force of TFP growth is the improvement of technological efficiency, while the rate of return to scale and technological progress hinder the growth, and both the East and the West show the same characteristics. (3) Through further analysis of the determinants of technical efficiency, the results show that the technical promotion and diffusion paths of tea growers' participation in cooperatives, training in disease and pest control techniques, and the government's early warning information of disease and pest could significantly improve technological efficiency. In addition, the adoption of technologies such as biological control and placement of stained swatches could also significantly improve technical efficiency. Whether they were large growers, exchange the information on disease and pest control experience with other growers, and whether insecticidal lamps were installed had no significant impacts. The conclusions are of great theoretical and practical significance to identify the growth and driving force of tea TFP, and to deeply understand growers' technology adoption behavior and diffusion mechanism.

Key words: TFP, technical efficiency, technology adoption behavior, technology diffusion path, tea growers