Research On The Impact Of Social Network On The Production Decision Of Rural Household

The rural households are the most basic production and operation units of agriculture in China.But due to the unbalanced relationships between the supply and demands,the unperfected conditions of production,and the insufficient ration of institution,the foundation of the small-scale peasant economy still weak is still weak.However,with the development of market economy,"Guan Xi",as the primary mode of China's social pattern,play an important role in the allocation of resources with the market mechanism.It helps to improve the traditional production decision of small rural households,and to speed up the integration of rural households into the development of modern agriculture.In fact,"Guan Xi" is also called "Social Network" in the field of humanities and social science.It is a unique form of expression of "Humanity-face" in China,and it is also an important content of social capital,and a special medium for the allocation of resources.No matter the mutual assistance in agricultural production,or the indivisibility in geographical conditions,or the inheritance and integration in traditional cultural,the rural households have formed a traditional social network based on blood and old geography in the formed rural social environment of China.However,"Reform and Opening-up" has promoted the spatial mobility and career transformation of rural households,which has produced a new type of social network based on the occupation and new geography and contains abundant heterogeneous social resources.In the process of social network differentiation,the ability of obtaining and integrating resources of rural households has been continuously improved,which further promoting the optimization and improvement of the allocation of agricultural factors of production.Especially in the process of farmland system reform,the policy of "Three Rights Separation" has greatly improved the mobility of land elements,and further changed the matching of production factors and the production decision of rural households.To sum up,under the background of deepening market reform,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the role of social networks(namely informal institutional factors)in the allocation of production and agricultural production decision of rural households.In this paper,with the basis of the strictly defining,such as "Rural Households","Social Network","Production Decision",the rural households who owns the contract management right of farmland and engages in agricultural production is chosen as the study object.Furthermore,taking the theory of social network and rural households' decision as the guidance,the influence of the social network on the material capital inputs(such as the mobilized and fixed factors)and labor force are discussed based on the analyses of the influence of social network on the allocation of farmland element(namely agricultural land transfer).This paper also study the planting decisions that is constrained by the factor allocation with the combination of the dynamic differentiation characteristics of social network in the transition period.The scientific problems studied in this paper are as follows: 1)During the transition period,do the differentiation of rural households' social network have an impact on the allocation of land elements and the production decision of rural households? 2)How the allocation of land elements play a regulating role between the social network and the production decision of rural households?Around the above-mentioned research issues,the main research contents of this paper are arranged as follows: 1)The definitions of basic concepts.Rural households,social networks,agricultural land transfer,and production decision are the specific research objects of this paper.Its connotation,extension and boundary is the logical starting point of this paper.2)The descriptions of the characteristics of social network differentiation and production decision of the rural households.The statistical analysis of social network and production decision is an important method to show the macrophenomenon of problems.This paper describes and analyzes the changes of rural social structure,the differentiation of rural area social networks,the agricultural land transfer,and the factual characteristics of production decision.All of these problems provide objective and realistic basis for the statistical inference and empirical research of this paper.3)The studies of influence of social network on the decisions of factor inputs.Firstly,the reform of the rural land system has laid the institutional foundation for the allocation of land.As a factor of production that lacking mobility in agricultural production,land input decision has its particularity.Therefore,the mechanism of social network on agricultural land transfer is analyzed and verified with the micro data.Secondly,on the basis of factor allocation,the influence of social network on material inputs(productive investment)and labor inputs are further investigated.4)The analyses of the influence of social network on the production decision of rural households.Based on the consideration of the problem of "Food Security" and the constraint of the land,labor or other factors,the influence of social network on the production decision of rural households are studied in the end.Moreover,in the verification process with micro data,this paper also tries to analyze the heterogeneity and regional difference of rural households.5)The researches on the construction of policy support system to optimize the production decision of rural households.Based on the theoretical and empirical analysis of the influence of social network on rural households' production decision,this paper put forward the policy support system to improve agricultural production decision of rural households.With the methods of strengthening the mobility of urban and rural factors,improving the relationship between rural households' social network,perfecting the system and mechanism of agricultural socialized service,and enhancing the management ability of rural households,the policy support system to promote the integration of rural households and modern agricultural development is finally set up.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: 1)The rural social structure of China is undergoing historical changes,and presents two characteristics of traditional closure and modern opening.On the one hand,the traditional rural social structure of China is a "local property",which is originated from the agricultural society.The "Difference Order Pattern" is the core characteristic of the social relationship and structure of the local society,and it shows the traditional social characteristics based on the relationship of blood and old geographical position.On the other hand,with the flow of urban and rural elements,the rural social structure of China shows the characteristics of differentiation.From the regional level,the coastal industrialized villages and South China clan-type villages still have a strong cohesion.However,the cohesion of the split villages in the north and the atomic villages in the Yangtze River valley gradually weakened,and the internal structure became more sparse and loose.At the same time,the changing trend of rural social structure in China provides the external conditions for the differentiation of rural social network.2)The influence of traditional social network and new social network on the production decision of rural households is obviously different.On the whole,with the deepening of market reform in the transitional period,the new social network has the significant impact on the agricultural land transfer,factors inputs and planting decision of rural households,while the effect of traditional social network are gradually weakened.The reason lies in the heterogeneity of resources provided by the new social network(including capital,information,technology,production and management capacity cultivated through interpersonal communication,and the promotion of human capital,etc.).And it enhances the ability of resource allocation for the rural households.This is similar to the concepts of "Strong Ties" and "Weak Ties" proposed by Granovetter.The former one has the same social relations and social resources,the latter is opposite.Compared to the traditional network,the new network plays a more significant role in the agricultural land transfer,factor allocation,and planting decision,which confirms the hypothesis of "weak ties"(Granovetter,1973).3)The traditional social network has no influence on the agricultural land transfer of rural households,but the effect of new social network are remarkable.During the period of economic and social transformation,the social network of rural households begins to differentiate under the effect of market-oriented infiltration,and shows the characteristics of polarization.This polarization is that the social function of the traditional social network begins to weaken,and the social function of the new social network is gradually strengthened.Empirical analysis shows that: the traditional social network does not influence the farmland transfer,but the new social network,which provides heterogeneous information and resources,promotes farmland transfer.And it shows the characteristics of rural households' heterogeneity.With the further researches,the results show that the economic development can weaken the land transfer of the traditional social network,but strengthen the land transfer of the new social network;and the deepening of marketization can strengthen the land transfer of traditional social network,but weaken the land transfer of new social network.4)With the expansion of social networks,the level of productive investment of rural households is raised.The social network is beneficial to the investment,not only for the agriculture mobility,but for the machinery of rural households.With the expansion of land scale of rural households,social network still play an important role in promoting the mobility of rural households.But it does not have effect on the investment of agricultural machinery for rural households,which is corresponding with the current situation of the agricultural mechanization.At present,the mechanical operation in agricultural production of China mainly cones from mechanical service rather than purchase(Yang et al.,2013;Zhang et al.,2017),which is due to the division of labor economy and outsourcing of agricultural services.In addition,the effect of land scale is also different in different stages of investment,that is,the social network has a U-shaped relationship under the constraint of land scale.However,the mechanical investment of rural households does not show this characteristic,which is related to the agricultural mechanization service market.5)The traditional social network has no influence on the agricultural labor forces,while the new social network obviously promotes the agricultural labor forces.Due to the variable selection of labor input and the decision of production factors,the new social network did not reduce the agricultural labor input of rural households by expanding the boundary of labor constraint,but had the opposite effect.From the region,whether in the eastern area,or the central and western areas,traditional and new social network does not influence the result of rural households' agricultural labor supply;And from the effect,the influence of new social network on the agricultural labor is bigger in the east region than the central and west region.Due to the adjustment range of rural households' land scale,the effect of land transfer between social network and rural households' agricultural labor are inconspicuous.But the farmland transfer has an intermediary effect between traditional social network and rural households' agricultural labor.6)With the expansion of social networks,the rural households show the trend of "Departure from Countryside" on the whole.Traditional and new social networks restrain the planting decision of rural households on food crop and other economic crop.In other words,the expansion and differentiation of social networks lead rural households to steer away from the traditional farming.From the heterogeneity of rural households,traditional social network inhibit the cultivation of cash crops of rural households and promote its planting structure to "Tendency to Plant Grains".Traditional social networks inhibit the cash crop planting decision of part-time rural households.And the new social network not only inhibits the food planting decision of part-time rural households,but also inhibits its economic planting decision.From the regional differences aspect,both types of social networks have inhibited the cultivation of rural households' economic crops in the main grain-producing areas and promoted the planting structure that tends to "Tendency to Plant Grains".These two types of social networks can inhibited the cultivation of food crops by rural households in the grain-selling areas,and the new social network has promoted the "Non Grain" planting structure of rural households in the grain-selling areas.According to the analysis above,the results show that the development of new rural formats is in line with the development needs of rural households during the transition period.Compared with the existing researches,the possible innovation of this paper is shown as follows.1)Possible innovation on the research perspective.Based on the economic and social rationality of rural households,this paper investigates the influence of the differentiation of social network on the agricultural land transfer,factors inputs and planting decision,which mainly reflects the role of informal system in the production decision of rural households under the background of market deepening reform.The results show that the traditional social network does not have a significant impact on the land transfer of rural households,while the new social network obviously promotes the land transfer.However,the existing researches suggest that the impact of social networks on agricultural land transfer is not significant.This is because that these literatures use the traditional social network measurement indexes to measure social networks of rural households.Therefore,it is innovative to study the allocation of rural households land factors and their production decisions from the perspective of social network differentiation.2)Possible innovation in the research methods.According to the differentiation characteristics of traditional and new social network,this paper constructs the corresponding index evaluation system by using the valuation method combining factor analysis method and entropy weight method.According to the definition of social network differentiation,traditional social network,and new social network,the variables that represents the kin and geographical relationship,industry relationship and network heterogeneity are selected in CFPS to quantify the traditional and new social network of rural households.It not only makes up the deficiency of single measurement of social network,but also reflects the characteristics of rural households' social network in the context of national conditions and agricultural conditions in China.It can help to expand the research boundary and research scope of social network.3)Possible innovation on research content.This paper investigates the agricultural land transfer,factor investment and planting decision of rural households from the perspective of social network capital attribute.The change of the production decision of rural households is the re-selection,re-matching and re-combination of traditional and new production factors.Previous researches focus on the impact of social network on a certain period,region or kind of agricultural production decision.However,this paper focuses on the social resource allocation in the process of social networks in dynamic differentiation under the mixed pattern of "Acquaintance society" and "Contractual society".It can help rural households to cross the "Information Gap" or "Resource Gap" in the process of agricultural modernization,and changes the influencing path of production decisions of rural households.