Research On Farmers’ Cooperative Supply In Rural Environmental Public Goods Of Chinese Rural Area: From The Perspective Of Rural Social Capital

Nowadays in Chinese rural communities, serious environmental problem cannot be solved effectively for a long time, and it radically reflects the characteristics of the lack of rural environmental public goods and backward public services. In the supply subject, farmers should play a dominant position in rural environmental public goods supply, and their voluntary supply will be an effective means in solving the environmental public goods provision shortage when government does not serve an efficient way. Simultaneously, it is also an urgent issue in the field of rural public management. However, from the present collected information, hitch-hiking behavior is one of the reasons which restrain the farmers? cooperation behaviour, and this can lead to the dilemma of collective action in cooperative supply in rural environmental public goods. In rural communities, there are abundant rural social capital based on social acquaintance which can maintain and promote the farmers? cooperation, that?s because the social soft restraints can make farmers individual behavior be affected by the behavior of others and the social environments they live in. That is, the best solution to overcome collective action dilemma is to embed farmers pursuing the maximum personal benefit in rural social structures. Based on the farmers? cooperation, we can combine farmers? individual behaviour with the collective decision-making behavior count on rural social capital forces, and thus to achieve the purpose of unitary interests between individual and collective.Hence, in such a state of the insufficient rural environmental public goods from the government and market, whether the rural social capital can play the important role in promoting farmers? cooperative supply? How do rural social capital and its different dimensionality affect farmers? cooperative supply willingness and payment behaviour? What?s the difference of community circumstance factors in farmers? cooperative supply under the level of inequality? These are the issues required to research in order to better realize farmers? cooperative supply in rural environmental public goods. Based on hereinbefore problems, the thesis takes rural environmental public goods as research object using the survey data collected from 810 rural families in Jilin as foundation, from the perspective of rural social capital. Then, the paper tries to explore the interaction mechanism between farmers? cooperative supply in rural environmental public goods and rural social capital, to some extent, a new strategy to effectively solve the problem of inadequate rural environmental public goods. The main study and conclusions are as follows:1. Research on the actuality of environmental public goods supply in Chinese rural communities.For now, some problems have emerged in the provision of rural environmental public goods, such as the supply content is comparatively monotonous and mainly focused on the countryside water-improving project, toilet reform and rural methane project. At the same time, the gap in different regions is distinct in supply items and investments of rural environmental public goods. Moreover, a single model of government supply is widespread in rural communities, and this supply model is difficult to satisfy the farmers? actual demands. Taking Jilin district as an example, the rural environmental public infrastructure supply is gravely deficient and the emphasis on sewage-treatment and domestic refuse treatment is not enough. It?s important to note that farmers are both more cooperative supply willingness and more able to pay up. However, farmers? cooperative supply is restricted owing to lack of the right organizer, reasonable benefit coordination system and hitch-hiking behavior. Conversely, farmers cooperative supply could be induced by rural elite. A final note about the part is that “family fund-raising” seems to be farmers? most accepted way.2. Research on the potential demand of rural environmental public goods.To get to know the farmers? actual need about rural environmental public goods is a prerequisite for the improvement of farmers cooperative supply. Our research shows that individual farmers? demand for rural environmental public goods has been enhancing by the increasing family income level. In addition, demand prioritization of rural environmental public goods is as follows: domestic sewage treatment facilities, utilization of straws and livestock wastes, the waste disposal station, protection of drinking water sources, the agricultural non-point source pollution and soil pollution control. After all, the overall satisfaction assessment on supply of rural environmental public goods is quite low. Among them, the lowest scores on a series of such choices are the rural environment clean project, human-animal separation project, garbage and waste water treatment, and this fully shows that the main need for farmers is rural small extemality environmental public goods which are closely related subjects of people? daily life. Furthermore, the results are consistent with demand prioritization and cluster analysis, and it also indicates that why we focus on the cooperative supply behavior research of small extemality environmental public goods. Moreover, the demand of farmers for rural environmental public goods is rather high and is affected by various factors such as farmers? individual characteristics, family characteristics, village characteristics, the social systematic environment and farmers? participation desire.3. The construction of rural social capital index system.In the study, the means to build rural social capital index system are scientificity and feasibility, which define farmer social capital index from five dimensions of farmers social trust, farmers social networks, farmers social prestige, farmers social participation and farmers social regulation, and village-level social capital index from four dimensions of village-level social trust, village-level social participation networks, village-level social regulation and village-level social reciprocity. On the individual farmer level, the scale of farmers social networks is not large and different communicatee is not the same degree of propinquity, as well as contacts? occupations are unitary. The level of farmers social trust is high, which is based on kinship and regional network and extent of social interaction for the most peasant households. Also, farmers social prestige and regulation are high while the level of social participation is lower. On the village level, characteristics of social capital are that high-level village-level social trust, low-level village-level social participation networks because of the small number of normative social organization, the common degree of village-level social regulation, but high-level village-level social reciprocity.4.Emprical Research explored the effect of rural social capital on farmers? cooperative supply in rural environmental public goods.The results indicate that rural social capital affects farmers? choices in cooperative supply through the mechanism of network, trust, regulation, prestige and reciprocity. According to the Probit model, estimates show that different levels of social capital have a significantly positive effect on cooperative supply willingness in rural environmental public goods. On different dimensions of farmer social capital, social trust, social networks and social regulation have the significant positive effect on farmers involved in cooperative supply on rural environmental public goods, however, farmers social prestige reduces the possibility of farmers? participative behavior. This reflects that multi-dimensional farmers social capital maybe lead to the uncertainty results of collective action. On different dimensions of village-level social capital, social trust, social participation networks and social reciprocity also have significantly positive influence on the willingness of farmers to participate in the supply. According to the Heckman two-stage model, the results show that different levels of social capital have a significantly positive effect on farmers? payment behaviour. However, from different dimensions of rural social capital, the influences on willingness to pay and payment volume are different. The amount of willingness to pay for is between 8.91yuan/month and 12.93 yuan/month by CVM measure.5. Differentia influence analysis of community circumstance factors in farmers? cooperative supply under the level of inequality.According to the HLM, our estimates show that there is 19.26% of the variance caused by different communities when it comes to cooperative supply willingness. Moreover, about the relation between farmer level variables and cooperative supply willingness, there are differences in the proportion of the variation caused by village level variables among income groups. What?s more, the same community circumstance factor brings a different concern to the relation between multi-dimensional farmer social capital and cooperative willingness, and the directive effect varies according to the farmer income level. Especially, with the increasing farmers incomes, the effect of village level variables on cooperative willingness takes on inverted-U type.6. Resaerch on the experience and inspiration of rural environmental cooperatives at home and abroad.In the part, the paper sums up the practical experience of rural environmental cooperatives in South Korea, the Netherlands, Changsha county in Hunan province, and some suggestions have been put forth: to establish and perfect the policies and regulation framework of rural environmental protection function taken by rural cooperative organizations, to increase financial input in rural environments self-government by villagers, to free up potential of rural cooperative organizations space, to actively cultivate rural social capital, to increase the awareness of farmers? environmental protection.