Research On The Behavior And Contract Selection Of Agricultural Productive Services Of Farmers Based On The Perspective Of Transaction Costs

Agricultural productive service is an important path to promote the revitalization of rural industries and promote the organic connection between small farmers and the development of modern agriculture,and is important support for the development of modern agriculture.At present,the development of agricultural productive services is in a critical period of upgrading.The dislocation development of diversified market service entities and the pattern of division of labor are gradually appearing.In particular,the emerging whole process trusteeship services gradually occupy the market,making the pattern of agricultural operations gradually shift from land-scale operations to service scale operation transition.However,agricultural productive services contain relatively high transaction costs,which potentially inhibit the agricultural productive service market.At the same time,the development of agricultural productive service contracts varies in degree,so that there is no long-term stable relationship between farmers and agricultural productive services.How to promote the development of agricultural productive services and establish a long-term and stable contractual relationship has become a key issue that needs to be resolved.This research takes farmers on the demand side of agricultural productive services as the research object,and through field surveys in 8 regions of the three northeastern provinces,based on the new institutional economics,with transaction costs as the center,adopting the "deepening of labor division-transaction costs-contract matching" framework,explores the nature and motivation of agricultural productive services,explains the reasons why farmers choose different contract types for agricultural productive services,constructs conditions for stable contractual relations between farmers and agricultural productive services,and analyzes the effects of agricultural productive services on the farmers' welfare,and ultimately provides countermeasures and suggestions for the healthy,rapid and stable development of agricultural productive services.The main research content and related conclusions of this paper are as follows:First,theoretical analysis.First,based on the theory of division of labor and specialization,we explore the nature of agricultural productive services from theoretical and practical aspects,and use inframarginal analysis to perform mathematical induction;second,based on transaction cost theory,the paper uses utility maximization analysis methods to explore transaction costs the internal mechanism of farmer's agricultural productive service behavior;finally,based on the theoretical framework of "transaction costs contract matching",a farmer model and a game model are constructed to analyze the impact of transaction costs on the choice of farmers' agricultural productive service contracts,and to explore its internal mechanism,and the paper constructs an incomplete contract game model to deeply analyze the impact of transaction costs on the stability of farmers' agricultural productive service contracts.Second,the impact of transaction costs on the decision-making of farmers' agricultural productive services.The mlogit model is used to analyze the influence of transaction characteristics on farmers' different types of agricultural productive service behaviors under Williamson's analysis paradigm,and the propensity score matching(PSM)method is used to test the robustness,and the paper further discusses the heterogeneity of farmers of different sizes.The results show that the transaction characteristics have a significant impact on the selection of different types of agricultural productive services by farmers,and there are significant differences in the selection of agricultural productive services by farmers of different sizes.First of all,farmers' choice of different types of agricultural productive services is mainly affected by theterrain characteristics,their ageing degree and breeding scale differences,especially the farmers' choices of whole process trusteeship services are more significant than that of partial process services.Secondly,given the asset specificity,the degree of land fragmentation,land topographic characteristics,and the degree of aging have significant differences in the choice of agricultural productive services of farmers of different scales.The degree of land fragmentation affects the increasingly large-scale farmers' choice of agricultural productive services.The selection behavior of agricultural productive services shows an upward trend and then decreases.The land topographic characteristics and the degree of aging have positive effects on the selection of agricultural productive services by farmers of different land scales,and impact on farmers of large-scale is the greatest,while medium-scale and small-scale is not obvious.In terms of risk characteristics,land operation risk has a significant hindering effect on the selection behavior of agricultural productive services by medium-and small-scale farmers,and has no obvious impact on large-scale farmers;while there is no difference in transaction risk,both have a restraining effect.The large-scale empirical results show that the scale of breeding only promotes the selection of small-scale farmers' agricultural whole process trusteeship services.Third,transaction costs have an impact on the choice of farmers' agricultural productive service contract types.Taking into account the problem of sample selection bias,the Heckman two-step model is used to analyze,among transaction characteristics,how the risk and scale and the search information cost generated by the contract process impact the choices of farmers' agricultural productive service contract types,and the paper further explores the level of personal trust regulation mechanism in it.Finally,the robustness test of the previous model estimation related conclusions is carried out by replacing the econometric model.The results show that the risk,scale and the cost of searching information during the contract process in the transaction characteristics have a significant impact on the selection behavior of farmers' agricultural productive service contract types,and the level of individual trust plays a moderating role between the transaction cost and agricultural productive service contract type selection.After correcting the sample selection bias,the following four conclusions are obtained.First,the risk,especially the transaction risk,is still a key factor in the selection behavior of farmers' agricultural productive service contracts.When facing greater moral hazards in the transaction process,choosing a formal contract is better than an oral contract.Second,the larger the scale of farmers,the greater the transaction risk they face in the transaction,and the higher the probability of choosing a formal written contract.Third,the high cost of searching information will hinder the choice of formal contracts.Fourth,farmers with higher levels of personal trust tend to choose verbal contracts.At the same time,the personal trust level plays a significant role of adjustment between transaction costs and the selection of farmers' productive service contract types,among them,it has a positive role in the negative impact of information costs on farmers' choice of formal contracts,and the risk and scale have suppressive moderating effects in the farmers' formal contract of agricultural productive services.Fourth,transaction costs have an impact on the stability of farmers' agricultural productive services contracts.The impact of contract stability in this part is measured from the willingness to renew the contract and the willingness to long-term cooperation.First,the paper uses the mvprobit model to conduct an empirical analysis of the impact of transaction costs on the stability of farmer's agricultural productive service contracts,and verifies the moderating effect of service satisfaction in transaction costs on the stability of agricultural productive service contracts;second,discusses the heterogeneity of transaction costs on the stability of different types of agricultural productive service contracts;finally,the empirical analysis content is further tested for robustnessthrough the structural equation model.The results show that: First,the transaction costs incurred in the contract process have a significant impact on the stability of the farmer's agricultural productive services contracts.Among them,the information cost has the largest impact,the negotiation cost is the second,and the execution cost is the smallest.Second,service satisfaction has a significant moderating effect on the stability of farmer's agricultural productive service contracts in transaction costs.Third,transaction costs have significant differences in the impact of different types of agricultural productive service contracts.In particular,negotiation costs and execution costs have different effects on the willingness to renew contracts and long-term cooperation for different types of agricultural productive services.Fourth,farmers with a high degree of aging are more inclined to renew their contracts with whole process trusteeship services.Risky natural disasters and transaction risks have a greater hindrance on the long-term cooperation willingness in regard of part of process of the agricultural productive services,but have little effect on the long-term cooperation willingness of whole process trusteeship services.Fifth,the effect of agricultural productive services on the welfare of farmers.Firstly,based on the theory of maximization of income,by constructing a welfare effect model,the paper discusses the theoretical analysis of the effects of agricultural productive services on the welfare of farmers from the equilibrium conditions of labor distribution;secondly,use the ESR model to analyze the effects of agricultural productive services on farmers under the counter factual framework.At the same time,we further analyze the impact of different types of agricultural productive services on the welfare effects of farmers;finally,discuss the differences in the welfare effects of farmers from the perspective of factor endowments.The conclusion shows:On the one hand,labor factors,capital factors,and land factors have a significant impact on the welfare effects of farmers.At the same time,among the basic characteristics of rural households,risk preference,social network,education level,and credit status all have a steady impact on the welfare of rural households.Among them,risk preference,strong social network,high educational level,and farmers with borrowing experience can promote the welfare effect.It is more likely to increase family income.On the other hand,agricultural productive services can improve the welfare of farmers and increase the overall welfare of farmers by increasing non-agricultural employment income or other operating income.At the same time,there are differences in the welfare effects of farmers participating in different types of agricultural productive services,and all of them can effectively improve the welfare of farmers.Among them,farmers' participation in the whole process of trusteeship services has the highest welfare effect,and participation in part of that is the second.In addition,the participation of farmers in part of the services and the whole process trusteeship services have a depressing effect on corn planting income.Specifically,farmers' participation in some aspects of the service will lose less corn planting income than the whole process trusteeship services.Based on the above analysis,the following policy recommendations are put forward:First,standardize the agricultural productive service market of partial process and strengthen the construction of the whole process trusteeship service market.On the one hand,strengthen technical training for agricultural productive service providers,and strive to cultivate high-quality professional technical service providers;on the other hand,it can provide targeted service subsidies to agricultural productive service providers.Second,improve the risk protection mechanism to reduce operation risks of farmers' agricultural productive services and the transaction risks.Agricultural productive service organizations may cooperate with insurance institutions to formulate and improve a reasonable insurance system.At the same time,agricultural productive service organizations can provide farmers with complete information andcommunication channels through the establishment of agricultural productive service intermediaries based on acquaintances.Third,the government should actively promote formal contracts and improve the contract specifications for agricultural productive services.The contract content,service price and guarantee scope can be designed according to the different characteristics of each region,open and transparent,and prevent opportunistic behaviors such as information asymmetry.Fourth,reduce transaction costs in the contract process and promote the stability of the contract relationships between farmers and agricultural productive service providers.Fifth,strengthen the quality of agricultural productive services and improve the service satisfaction of farmers.Research possible innovations:First,research object innovation.The research focuses on the relationship between transaction costs,contract selection and farmers' choices of agricultural productive services.The research has broken through the scope of only analyzing part of process of agricultural productive services in the past,focusing on the whole process of trusteeship services.The whole process trusteeship service is a new thing.It is in the early stage of development and belongs to the exploratory stage of institutional arrangements.As a research object,it is not only novel,but also very practical.It can provide guiding suggestions for the further development of new agricultural productive services.Second,the research perspective is innovative.The research breaks through the conventional thinking of using the farmer model to conduct farmer behavior research,regarding its behavior selection as a new type of agricultural institutional arrangement,using the principles of new institutional economics for research.Focusing on farmers,based on the analysis of transaction costs,reasonable use of transaction cost theory and contract theory to explore the reasons for the choice of agricultural productive service behavior,choice differences,contract choice and choice effects.There are few domestic quantitative researches on transaction cost analysis and measurement.The analysis of transaction costs of a new institutional arrangement can answer questions about system establishment,provides forward-looking suggestions for agricultural productive services,and brings conclusions and suggestions closer to reality.Third,innovation in research ideas.In the existing studies,the choice of agricultural productive service contracts has not attracted much attention.Based on the disclosure of the mechanism of transaction costs on farmers' agricultural productive service behavior selection,this article further explores the intrinsic effect of transaction costs on the contractual relationship between farmers and agricultural productive services.The impact mechanism has been further advanced in the existing research.