Research On The Willingness, Behavior And Performance Of Seed Enterprises Participating In Unified Seed Supplying Program

Generally, the implementation of government’s industrial programs will intervene in the product supply of those industries, which will bring significant impact to the development of industrial organizations. As an important agricultural industry program, the implementation and promotion of Unified Seed Supplying Program (hereafter USSP) will inevitably have an impact on the operation and development of seed companies, thereby affecting the development of the whole seed industry. Therefore, studying the effects of USSP on seed companies and the mechanism have important theoretical and practical significance. Taking canola USSP as an example, this paper constructed a theoretical framework of government’s USSP affecting seed companies and the mechanism, and then did the empirical test accordingly. It mainly includes the following aspects: First, theoretically analyzing the influence factors of the willingness, behavior andperformance of seed companies participating in USSP and the mechanism. (1) According to the Theory of Reasoned Action, analying the influence factors of the willingness and subsequent willingness of seed companies participating in USSP and the mechanism. (2) Based on the Theory of Reasoned Action, Theory of Competitive Strategy, Theory of Social Capital and the Theory of Public Relations, analyzing the influence factors of the behavior of seed companies participating in USSP and the mechanism. (3) Using the Theory of Industrial Organization, Theory of Competitive Strategy and the Theory of Social Capital, analyzing the impact of seed companies participating in USSP on their business performance and the mechanism. Second, based on 256 observations from 8 seed company’s business in 113 counties(cities) of 6 provinces and 215 observations from 9 seed company’s business in 105 counties (cities) of 7 provinces (directly governed city regions), testing the theoretical hypotheses which are related to the influence factors of the willingness, behavior and performance of seed companies participating in USSP and the mechanism. We got the following conclusions:(1) The influence factors of seed company’s willingness to participate in USSP are seed company’s evaluation of USSP, cost factors and operating scenarios. Specifically, company’s evaluation and economic cost have a significant positive impact on the willingness to participate, but energy cost has significant negative impact; operating scenario regulates the relationship between economic cost, energy cost and the willingness to participate to a certain extent; although the performance of seed companies participating in USSP can enhance their subsequent willingness to participate, government rent-seeking largely hindered seed company’s subsequent willingness. (2) The willingness to participate has a significant positive impact on their participative behavior, especially in market-oriented and government-led scenario, there is a significant correlation between willingness to participate and behavior; the company’s institutional social capital and temporary public relations activities can help them to participate successfully, and institutional social capital strengthens the relationship between market position and successful participation, but temporary public relations activities interfere this relationship to a certain extent; the further analysis on temporary public relations activities’regulating effect indicates that in initial and mixed scenarios, temporary public relations activities contribute to consolidating the relationship between seed company’s market position and successful participation, but in market-oriented and government-led senarios, they have interference effect to a certain degree. (3) Seed companies’participative behavior can contribute to the improvement of operating performance largely, especially to market share. But the analysis based on different operating scenarios indicates that "the overmatch wastes the effort" and "the weak quenches thirst by watching plums" in terms of participating in the USSP, i.e. when seed companies have stronger business in some counties (cities), participating does not contribute so much to their performance, even has negative effect, but they have high participation rate. In contrast, when seed companies have weaker business, this contribution is significantly positive, but their participation rare is very low; seed company’s institutional social capital can interfere the relationship between market position and operating performance to a certain extent.Based on these conclusions, this paper offers countermeasures and suggestions on the perspective of companies and the government:(1) For one thing, companies should improve their operating strength by legitimate competition means; for another, they should maintain good relationships with government departments, but can not be over-reliance. And they should handle the relationship with government’s industrial development program flexiblely according to the specific operating scenario. (2) When implementing an industrial development program, the government should pay attention to the attitude and behavior of market players, consider their vital interest, predict their possible reactions and the impact of these reactions on the whole industry, and develop plans accordingly; provide timely and efficient service to ensure the program fair, just and open, and effectively stimulate the participating positivity of related bodies; take some measures to avoid excessive intervention of institutional social capital and put an end to the speculation, rent-seeking and other improper behaviors.The possible innovations are as follows:(1) The innovation on research perspective: based on the perspective of Industrial Organizational Theory and combining the related theories of Psychology, Sociology, Marketing and Public Relations, this paper analyzed the impact of USSP on seed companies and the mechanism. It has some improvement compared with the existing literature which analyzed it only from single theoretical perspective. (2) The innovation on research content:this paper construted a unique analysis framework of policy effects of government’s industrial program and the mechanism, and got some new conclusions with theoretical value. (3) The innovation on the using of methods:when analyzing the impact of seed company participating in USSP on operating performance, this paper not only used Multiple Regression method, but also did empirical test using Difference-in-Difference model because of taking into account the interference of individual fixed effect, time trend and endogeneity in assessing the effect of policies, and introduced willingness to participate into Difference-in-Difference-in-Difference model, which made the empirical analysis access a deeper level.