The New Round Of Collective Forest Tenure Reform In North China: Motivation, Path And Performance

Forestry is an important industryof national economy in China, not only provides all kinds of forest products to people, but also is the protective barrier of ecological environment, who plays a crucial role in economy development of mountainous area. For a long time, forest tenure reform lags behind synchronous agriculture tenure reform seriously, and interests, rights, responsibilities and are not clear, forest management mechanism is not perfect, and distribution of interests is not reasonable in collective forest area of North China, which causes farmers’ forestry production and operation enthusiasm is not high, forest income is low, and becomes the shackles of the forestry productivity further development. In order to solve such problem and comply with the forest right’s requirements for farmers, North collective forest area began the pilot work of the new round of collective forest tenure reform in Liaoning province in March 2005, and then started in full swing in 2008. So, what’s the motivation of new round of collective forest tenure reform? How about the paths? In different paths, how is the performance of reform? Whether the collective forest tenure reform increases farmers’forestry production enthusiasm, changes their behavior, and increases their forest income under different paths? These questions are demanding prompt solution. Therefore, it is very important that research collective forest tenure reform’s motivation, path of pilot province, appraise the performance of reform and summarize the experience and shortage in reform process.This paper establishes analytical framework of "institution-behavior-performance" to make known that transmission mechanism of collective forest tenure reform, farmer’s behavior and economic perforemance in the foundation of institutional economics and game theory. It constructs motivation model of reform analyzes the motivation of the new round of collective forest tenure reform. It probes the new round of collective forest tenure reform path and its formation mechanism based on path dependence theory and makes an empirical analysis on path selection influencing factors using investigation data. And then it analyzes farmer’s forestry production decision mode and process from three parts of positive, conforming and passive types and probes the influence mechanism of reform on farmer’s decision. Under the analytical framework, it uses Heckmann two-step decision model, Faustman trees revenue model and Cobb-Douglas production function to investigate the performance of reform from the perspective of empirical analysis.The result of two-level evolutionary game model analyse shows that the collective forest tenure reform is constantly advancing through the macro-level game between central government and local government, the micro-level game between local government and farmers, and the game from the two-level interaction evolution. The reform scheme must consider the interests of the tripartite game subjects simultaneously. From the perspective of supplyment and demandment of forest rights, the reform’s motivation are excitement and induction of economic interests, scarcity of forest resources and the elevation of forestry production efficiency.According to the actual forest tenure reform in Liaoning province and the concrete conditions of investigation, it summarizes and classifies the reform paths, and discovers that different paths have different influencing factors. Contract period, the distance between forestland and farmer’s house, age of stand, forestland area and householder’s education year play a significant impact on farmer’s selection to reform paths. Different paths have different influence on farmer’s production behavior. In the perspective of production willing, farmer persues production in commercial forest; the farmer’s production enthusiasm for household management is higher than group-household management’s; compareing with other forest right acquirement ways, farmer enjoys production in hilly land allotted for private use. In the perspective of inputting labors in forestry production, farmer puts in more labors in commercial forest and forestland of household management; compareing with contract, more labors are input in forestland acquired by competitive auction or hilly land allotted for private use. In the perspective of inputting labors in forestry manage and protect, farmer puts in more labors in public welfare forest and forestland of household management; compareing with circulation, more labors are input in forestland acquired by competitive auction and contract and hilly land allotted for private use. In the perspective of investment, household management has positive effect on investment decision and scale.Farmer’s forestry production economic performance analysis shows that the reason of farmers’forestry income differential is different paths give different forest rights combination, which makes farmer’s production behavior different. Some farmers are positive for production and others maintain wait-and-see attitude, causes the income of farmers different. The effect of farmer’s production behavior on forestry income indicates that labors inputting in forestry manage and protect have a significant negative impact on either current income or potential income, and labors inputting in forestry production, forestland area and investment have positive influence.Based on the conclusion, this paper suggests that in the process of collective forest tenure coordinated reform, it should establish scientific cutting quota system and nice forest right circulation system, promote farmers circulate forestland properly and scale management, and obtain forestry gains on schedule; increase compensation and development efforts on the ecological public welfare forest, and improve farmer’s enthusiasm to manage and protect forest; widen forest financial products, increase farmers financing channels, enhance their enthusiasm and possibility of investing, thus improve farmer’s forestry income and further perfect the collective forest tenure reform in North China.