Study On The Formation Mechanism And Social Effects Of Agricultural Industry Cluster

The industrial cluster is an important economic phenomenon in today’s society, which shows a good development in many domestic and international nations and regions, advanced development of industrial cluster and its economic effects have received much more attention. With the development of agricultural industrialization and agricultural modernization, it has become increasingly concerned about agricultural industry cluster, a new agricultural economy organization. Foreign agricultural industry cluster developed earlier and have many successful cases, such as Wine Industrial Cluster in the USA and in Australia, and flower industry cluster in the Netherland. In recent years, Agriculture Industrial Cluster emerged under the popularity, relationship and geo social background in the rural area in China, such as Vegetable Industry Cluster in Shandong Province, Flower Industry Clusters in Yunnan Province, Tea industry clusters in Anhui Province, which depended on highly specialized division of labor and cooperation, and create unique competitive advantages. Therefore, study about agricultural industry cluster development and social effects of China and related problems, which could not only theoretically enrich the results of the agricultural industry cluster, but also provide guidance for the development of China’s agricultural industry cluster in practice.At present, domestic and foreign scholars have been conducted a lot of research on the issues related to agriculture industry cluster, and achieved initial results. Although much is known about development status and model and formation mechanism from the research perspective, little is known from the micro perspective of social effect. In view of this, this paper mainly combined theories involved in industry cluster, social capital and transaction costs, etc. with the existing research of agricultural industry cluster at home and abroad to analyze the formation mechanism and the social effects of agricultural industry cluster. Firstly, we analyzed the formation mechanism of Anhui tea industry cluster from the perspective of "Diamond Model", and generalized the basic situation of tea industry cluster in Anhui entirely; Secondly, we also assessed the social effects of agricultural industry cluster, that is the effect of agricultural industry cluster to the farmers and agricultural enterprises income, transaction cost and technical efficiency, using semi-logarithm regression model, ordered Logistic model, multiple linear regression model, translog production function and stochastic frontier analysis method. Finally, we evaluated the government function and how to play the role of government during the process of development and evolution of agricultural industry cluster, by using entropy evaluation method and the fuzzy synthetic evaluation method. The mainly findings and conclusions are consisted of six parts as follows:The first part is the "Introduction","theoretical basis" and "literature review", including the chapterl and chapter2. First of all, we proposed analysis problems, expounded the purpose and the meaning of the research, defined the relevant concepts, explained the research methods and technical route, and finally gave the structure arrangement of the paper. Secondly, we also induced and summarized the theory of industry clusters, social capital, transaction cost and other relevant theories in the part of theoretical basis. Furthermore, we also sort out extensive literature at home and abroad, involved in the formation mechanism of agricultural industry cluster, development status and the mode of development of agricultural industry cluster, cooperative relationship of agricultural industrial cluster and the cluster competitiveness, knowledge spillovers, technological innovation and the evolution of agricultural industrial cluster, the relation of the development of agricultural industry cluster and the development of agriculture and rural economy etc., finally this paper discussed the existing research briefly.The second part is about the current situation of the development of China’s tea industry and tea industrial clusters, including the chapter3. We reviewed the basic policy and status of tea industry in China and discussed production, processing, circulation, consumption, trade and other fields of our country tea industry, and then sort out the current regional distribution of tea industrial cluster in China and calculated the technical efficiency of the main tea producing areas in China in this chapter. The third part is the empirical analysis on the macro level, that is analyzed and discussed the formation mechanism of tea industrial clusters in Anhui province, including the chapter4. Based on the analysis of tea industry and tea industry cluster in China, we summarized the basic situation of tea industry in Huangshan City and Lu’an City of Anhui province and analyzed the formation mechanism of Anhui tea industry cluster using the "Diamond Model" in this chapter. Finally this chapter introduced the research design of this article, describes the basic situation of the sample, and lay the foundation for the econometric analysis in the subsequent chapters.The fourth part is the empirical analysis on the micro level, mainly including the chapters5,6and7. We firstly reviewed and summarized the related literature according to the key points of each chapter studies correspondingly. Subsequently, we analyzed empirically the social effects of agricultural industry cluster, that is the effect of agricultural industry cluster to the farmers and agricultural enterprises income, transaction cost and technical efficiency by constructing and applying a semi-logarithmic regression model, ordered Logistic model, multiple linear regression model and stochastic frontier analysis and other models and methods respectively.The fifth part is the analysis of the role of government, including the chapter8. We analyzed the relationship between the development and evolution of agricultural industry cluster and the function of the government, construct the evaluation index system of government function and evaluate the reliability and validity analysis using analysis method of Cronbach’alpha reliability coefficient and exploratory factor, and then analyzed empirically the exerting degree of government functions within it by using entropy evaluation method and fuzzy synthetic evaluation method.The sixth part is the part of conclusions and policy recommendations, including the chapter9. The study found that, first of all, the agricultural industry cluster was formed under many factors including good production factors, good demand at home and abroad, agricultural enterprises strategy, government support and other factors. With the development of agricultural industry cluster, the social effect of agricultural industry cluster is prominent gradually. That is, within the agricultural industry cluster, through the cluster internal social network and social relation, the accumulation of social capital and human capital can effectively improve the income of farmers and agricultural enterprises; within the cluster, social capital and information sharing mechanism can reduce the transaction cost of farmers and agricultural enterprise; social network and social capital within the cluster can promote the farmers and agricultural production technology efficiency improvement. At the same time, the government plays important roles during the course of agricultural industry cluster development and evolution. The government is an important driving force and provide essential public products for the development of agricultural industry cluster. Moreover, the government can effectively overcome the economic negative externality and market failure. In a word, at present, the role of government is in the general level during the course of agricultural industry cluster development and evolution in Anhui province. Government played a good functional role in the elements of support related to infrastructure construction, the support for tea garden and investment to science and technology. Simultaneously, government also played a general performance on production and market related to direct subsidies and tax incentives of tea producers and wholesale market construction, cluster brand promotion. Ultimately, our put forward corresponding strategies and suggestions based on our conclusions and the difference between participants in the agricultural industry cluster.