An Analysis Of Farmers' Behavior Under Different Forms Of Industrial Organizations

As the core of the rural reform, the household contract responsibility system had resolved the problem of oversight in collective production, and made farmers become the chief part in agricultural production and management. This system reform not only greatly increased the enthusiasm of farmers'production and management, but also improved the land and labor productivity and increased market supply of agricultural products. At the same time, the traditional circulation pattern of agricultural product had changed a lot. It was replaced by modern distribution networks which are diversified, multi-level, multi-channel. It had become more and more difficult for scattered farmers to adapt to the changes in market, which resulted in the difficulty in selling agricultural products, it also showed that Chinese agricultural production had met with market discipline. This makes China face new challenges in current agricultural and rural development, namely how to achieve an effective way to connect scattered farmers with large market, and ensure the quality and safety of agricultural products.With the unchanged premise of the household contract responsibility system, both domestic and foreign scholars had made a lot of researches on this issue in different perspectives, however, they generally considered that the implementation of agricultural industrial chain management is conducive to resolve the conflicts between subminiature-scale farmers and large super markets, as well as to ensure the safety of agricultural products and increase farmers'income. Among of them, the innovation of Agricultural Organizations is the core part of the implementation of industrial chain management. But the existing research has mainly focused on industrial organization which affects farmers'behaviors and the quality control, on the other hand, most of them are qualitative researches, which provided feasible suggestions to improve the quality of agricultural products in China. However, these studies did not systematically elaborate the mechanism how industrial organization affected the behavior of farmers, nor analyze the difference and influencing factors in the view of farmers.Through theoretical analysis, this paper reviews logical relationship between industrial organization and farmers' market behavior, which provided the theoretical basis for the empirical analysis.In order to analyze farmers'behavior, this paper use the 403 survey data from pear growers in 4 counties (cities),12 townships,24 administrative villages in Hebei and Xinjiang provinces. Then the paper empirically analyzed the correlations between industrial organization and farmers'behavior to produce high-quality pear, and the sales activities, the production of technical efficiency and per revenue of the pear production, then, after the statistic analysis and the empirical study, the research will concludes relevant policy recommendations. The study is divided into eight chapters, the main contents and conclusions are as follows:Part 1:The forms of pear industrial organization in China and the mechanism analysis of this organization to affect farmers'market behaviorFirstly, the paper analyzes the production and trade of the world pear industry, and describes the pear production, processing and consumption in China. The study suggests that China is the largest pear producer in the world, however, compared with the production, the trade of pear is still small in China. Domestic consumption is concentrated on fresh pear and the market is still controlled by buyers. With the ever-increasing income levels of residents and the intensity in other alternative and competitive fruits, both pear quality and packaging grades play more and more important roles in consumers'purchasing decision. Through description of the pear growers in different industrial organization in Hebei and Xinjiang, the paper further clarify the whole situation of pear industrial organization in China. Sample statistics showed that the pear growers currently mainly used market transactions (64.52%), while the percentage of farmers who attended cooperative organization and production contracts is relatively low, accounting for 27.79% and 7.69% respectively. The further statistical analysis on the survey data shows that the access for farmers to join the closely industrial organization are the technical guidance, lower prices for agricultural production materials and a well sales channel, while the lack of enterprises or cooperative organizations around the farmers, and the deficiency of knowledge in production contract and cooperatives are the major factors to prevent farmers from joining the closely organization. After that, this chapter analyzes mechanism of industrial organization on the behavior of farmers from four aspects--the interests of the constraint mechanism, signal transduction mechanism, organization and leadership mechanism and market structure, and these will provide a theoretical support for the follow-up analysis.Part 2:the Comparative analysis of different forms of Industrial organizations and farmers'behavior to ensure the quality and safety of pear industry.Using survey data and the theory of planned behavior model, the paper adopts multiple linear regression equation to analyze and compare the reasons of differences in farmers' behavior in different industrial organization.The results show that in different Industrial organization forms, the farmers'behavior significantly differs, as well as the factors Specifically, in a loose form of industrial organization, farmers'behavior to gain high quality and safety in pear production is mainly affected by the following factors, fruit farmers'attitudes, goals, experience and pear growing revenue in the proportion of household income. But under the closely form of industrial organization, farmers'behavior is affect by farmers'attitudes, goals, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and other psychological factors, and also by the economic environment, the decision maker's cultivation experience, the share of pears income in total household income, the cultivated areas and so on.Part 3:the Empirical Analysis of Forms of Industrial organization and pear farmers' selling behavior.Firstly, the article analyzes the fruit sales channels shared by farmers in Hebei and Xinjiang provinces, and compares the difference between these channels in different industrial organization forms.The result shows that broker is still the main channel, enterprises and cooperative society are the second largest trading partners (accounting for 30.27%).The proportion taken by enterprises or cooperatives in close form of industrial organization (75.52%) is higher than farmers in loose one (5.38% higher). Using the transaction cost theory and the theory of industrial organization, the paper explains the reasons why farmers adopt fruit consignment, and compares the differences of farmers' selling behaviors under the two industrial organization forms.Using the 237 household data in Hebei Province, this paper studies the factors which influence the farmers'choice and the strength involved.The results show that the risk preference of the head in household, family size, pear income shares in total household income, levels of the knowledge of the consignment and the difficulty to obtain information are the main factors affect farmers to choose consignment.In addition, the greater the pear growing area, the possibilities for farmers to choose consignment will much higher, along with the higher evaluation of the latter market price.Part 4:Comparative Analysis of production performance of farmers in different industry organizations.According to field survey data, the paper uses the ultrasound C-D production function to estimate the production efficiency of pear farmers.After calculation, the average household production technology efficiency is 59.08% which indicates that under the premise of other conditions remaining unchanged, the yield can be increased a lot after eliminating the loss of technical efficiency.Under the close industrial organization, the farmers'average production technical efficiency is 68.35%, while the percentage in loose organization is 54.18%, undoubtedly, the former is significantly higher than the latter.Factor analysis shows that the efficiency of household production technology is impacted by the education levels of main decision makers, the planting area, pear income shares in total household income, industrial organization, and whether to participate in the training. After further analysis of the factors which affect the net income per acre of farmers, the result shows the net income is mainly affected by the education level of the head in the household, proportion of income by pear in total household income, acreage, ages of trees, forms of industrial organizations, whether to participate in training and the regional differences.