| The transfer of rural labor to urban and non-agricultural industries leads to the decrease in agricultural labor and remittances inflows, and the labor costs rise in agricultural production and the increase in funding have brought the power and opportunities for labor-saving technologies in agricultural production. The power and opportunities have been confirmed in the study based on macroeconomic data. But the investigation of farmers’ microscopic behavior has discovered the opposite proof: labor transfer does not bring a strong induction and promotion for farmers to adopt labor-saving technologies, but has a negative impact. Contradiction between the findings from macro-data and the analyses of farmers’microscopic behavior means that the impact of labor transfer on farmers’ production and technologies are varied in different regions, even among different farmers. The existing literature on the study of the differences is not enough, mainly about the analysis of the negative impact of the labor transfer on agricultural technology progress and technical efficiency or positive role of the labor transfer, without further proof for the reasons of the formation of the negative impact, and without seeking for the conditions of the positive role. Although New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) holds that the imperfection of the factor markets in developing countries results in the negative impact of labor loss on agricultural production, but the reasons have not been inspected in the empirical study. There are also a few studies holding that differences in the mode of labor transfer will produce different impact of labor transfer on the adoption of agricultural technology, and labor transfer has different impact on the needs of different types of technologies. But so far no convincing evidence has been found to explain why labor transfer has such a big different impact on farmer’s production and technical behavior in different regions, even among different farmers.Based on the above background, drawing from the theory of induced technological innovation, the theory of technology adoption behavior, the theory of technical efficiency and the new theory of labor migration, this article analyzes the impact differences of labor transfer in farmers’choosing labor-saving technologies behavior under the following five conditions:the perfection degree of different factor markets, the degree of farmers’organizations, farmers’level of human capital, the effectiveness of agricultural technology promotion, and the normative of land transfer. This article, by means of analyzing and recognizing the main conditions of labor transfer to induce farmers to adopt labor-saving technologies behavior, aims to provide some theoretical references for policies designed to promote technological progress in agriculture in the context of labor transfer.This paper is to study under what conditions the massive transfer of labor and the rapid rise of labor costs can effectively induce farmers to adopt labor-saving technologies and improve technical efficiency. This article hopes to prove the argument: achieving the induction of labor transfer for farmers to adopt labor-saving technologies and improve the technical efficiency must have certain conditions, and only after these achieving conditions are met, the reduced labor, the rise in labor costs as well as remittance inflows caused by labor transfer will encourage farmers to actively seek labor-saving technology.The contents of this study include:(1) The inductive mechanism and its achieving conditions of labor transfer for farmers to adopt labor-saving technology and improve the technical efficiency. By use of induced model of technological innovation, from the principle of the elements input configuration in farmers’ production behavior, the paper analyzes reduced labor and increase in remittances to induce fanners to change the input configuration, and to use labor-saving technologies as well as to improve the technical efficiency. On this basis, the paper puts forward and analyzes the working principle of the induction effect of labor transfer from the following five achieving conditions:better agricultural factor markets, improvement of the degree of farmers’organizations, improvement of farmers’ level of human capital, effective promotion of agricultural technology, as well as the system innovation of internalization of the benefits of technology.(2) The empirical test of the inductive effects of labor transfer on farmers’ adoption of labor-saving technologies and the achieving conditions. Grouped regression and construct cross terms are used respectively to test the influence of achieving conditions on the inductive effect of the adoption of the technology in labor transfer. In grouped regression, farmers are divided into two sub-samples according to whether they meet the achieving conditions or not. By probit model, the two sub-samples are regressed respectively. Then the number of labor transfer and the two regression coefficients of remittances are tested chi-squarely to detennine whether the differences of the coefficients are significant or not, so as to detennine the satisfaction of the conditions will affect the implementation of the labor transfer in induced effect of technology adoption or not. Multiply the representative variables of all achieving conditions, the number of labor transfer and remittances with construct cross-terms, and then make a regression analysis, the significance of the coefficients of the cross terms can be used as the basis to judge whether the achieving conditions can meet the expected assumptions.(3) The empirical test of the inductive effects of labor transfer on farmers’technical efficiency and the achieving conditions. Grouped regression and construct cross terms are used respectively to test the influence of achieving conditions on the inductive effect of the adoption of the technology in labor transfer. In grouped regression, farmers are divided into two sub-samples according to whether they meet the achieving conditions or not. By tobit model, the two sub-samples are regressed respectively. Then the number of labor transfer and the two regression coefficients of remittances are tested chi-squarely to determine whether the differences of the coefficients are significant or not, so as to detennine the satisfaction of the conditions will affect the implementation of the labor transfer in induced effect of technical efficiency or not. At the same time, multiply the representative variables of all achieving conditions, the number of labor transfer and remittances with construct cross-terms, and then make a regression analysis, the significance of the coefficients of the cross terms can be used as the basis to judge whether the achieving conditions can meet the expected assumptions.(4) Impact analysis of achieving conditions of farmers’behavior in using labor-saving technologies. By use of multi-channel data, make a further comprehensive evaluation of the five conditions:the perfection degree of China’s current agricultural factor markets, the degree of farmers organizations, farmers’level of human capital, and the effectiveness of the promotion of agricultural technology and the nonnative of land transfer. On this basis, the impact and constraints are demonstrated about the achieving conditions of farmers’ adoption of labor-saving technologies.(5) Policy recommendations for farmers to adopt the technology and improve the technical efficiency on the background of labor transfer. Explore viable recommendations mainly from the perspective of the five conditions, but also from the perspective of comprehensive and systemic angle.The conclusions of this study include:(1) The shortages of agricultural labor resulted from massive labor transfer and remittance inflows do not necessarily induce and promote farmers’ behavior in labor-saving technologies in agricultural production.(2) The induction of labor transfer for farmers to adopt labor-saving technology behavior must be based on certain conditions, which include improved agricultural factor markets, the improvement in the level of farmers’ organizations, the enhancing of farmers’ level of human capital, the effectiveness of enhancements of agricultural technology promotion as well as the nonnative of land transfer.(3)The different achieving conditions such as the perfection degree of agricultural factor markets, the degree of farmers organizations, farmers’ level of human capital, the effectiveness of agricultural extension services and the normative of land transfer make the induced role of labor transfer have significant differences for farmers to adopt labor-saving technologies behavior. Its specific manifestations lie in:①Under the condition of lower perfection degree of agricultural factor markets, the number of labor transfer has a negative effect on both farmers’ adoption of labor-saving technologies and the technical efficiency of the farmers, while the impact of remittances is not significant. When the perfection degree of agricultural factor markets increases gradually, the number of labor transfer has a positive impact on farmers’ adoption of labor-saving technologies, and at the same time if farmers have a high degree of organization, the increase in the number of labor transfer will induce farmers to improve the efficiency of production technology.②Under the condition of lower degree of farmers’ organizations, the increase in the number of labor transfer and remittance does not induce the farmers to adopt labor-saving technologies and improve the efficiency of production technology, but with the improvement in the level of farmers’ organizations, the number of labor transfer will significantly induce and promote farmers to adopt labor-saving technologies and improve the technical efficiency.③Under the condition of lower effectiveness of the promotion of agricultural technology,the number of labor transfer has a negative effect on farmers’ adoption of labor-saving technologies and technical efficiency, and the impact of remittances is not significant. With the enhancements of the effectiveness of agricultural extension services, the number of labor transfer has a positive impact on farmers’adoption of labor-saving technologies, while the negative effects of the number of labor transfer on technical efficiency will be on the decrease, and remittances will form a significant positive effect on farmers’technical efficiency.④Farmers’level of human capital alone does not produce the role of labor transfer in inducing farmers to adopt labor-saving technology acts, but together with the effectiveness of the promotion of agricultural technology and farmers’ enhanced level of human capital, labor transfer has induced effect on farmers’adoption of labor-saving technologies and improvement of technical efficiency.⑤Under the condition of weaker nonnative of land transfer, the number of labor transfer has a negative impact on farmers’ adoption of labor-saving technologies or the improve of technical efficiency, while standardized land transfer will suppress the negative effects of the number of labor transfer on farmers’efficiency of production technology.(4) In the context of labor transfer, the imperfection of agricultural factor markets, lower degree of farmers’organizations, farmers’low levels of human capital, inadequate agricultural extension services, and nonstandardized land transfer are important reasons in constraining farmers to adopt labor-saving technology acts.The innovations of this paper lie in:(1) Providing an idea of empirical analysis to improve the microscopic foundation of the agricultural induction technology innovation theory. This paper puts forward the proposition that there exist achieving condi tions for the changes of factor endowment to induce farmers to adopt conservative scarce resources, and from the realistic background of massive labor transfer, household survey data confirm that different achieving conditions have different constraints on agricultural labor shortages led by-labor transfer and remittance inflows inducing farmers to adopt labor-saving technologies behavior. This study is not only to verify the above proposition and agriculture induced technological innovation theory to effectively compensate for the lack of microscopic evidence base defects research perspectives and academic learn.(2) Extending the contents of the research of the new economics of labor migration,which studies the impact of labor transfer on the agricultural production only based on the premise of imperfect factor markets. This paper not only analyzes the impact of labor transfer on farmers’technology behavior under the conditions of imperfection of the land and other market elements, also demonstrates the constraints of labor transfer on the conditions of lower degree of farmers’ organizations, farmers low levels of human capital and inadequate agricultural extension services for farmers to adopt labor-saving technologies behavior, thereby enriching and improving the conclusions of the literature of the new economics labor migration. |
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