Study On The Influence Of Farmland Tenure Strength On Farmers’ Cooperative Behavior In Wheat Production

As the main part of China agricultural production for a long time,peasants have the characteristics of flexible and meticulous,which is the fundamental guarantee of national food security.However,there are two major drawbacks in small-scale farming.One is the serious fragmentation of agricultural land,and the other is the continuous decline in the quantity and quality of agricultural labor supply,which gradually leads to problems such as the diseconomies of small production scale,poor ability to resist risks,and even abandon farmland.These issues may hindering the development of modern agriculture.How to promote the organic connection between peasants and modern agriculture to realize the revitalization of socialist countryside with Chinese characteristics has become a problem worth studying.Many experts and scholars proposed to solve the paradoxical dilemma of the coexistence of super small-scale agricultural operation and abandoned land by farmers’ cooperation.However,the development of farmers’ cooperation in China is poor now,and the stability of farmers’ spontaneous or compulsory cooperation behavior is weak,and mature experience has not been formed for reference.At the same time,there are problems such as unclear boundaries of rights,responsibilities and interests,and insufficient endogenous incentives in production cooperation.How to change this situation needs to rely on other forces.Farmland tenure,as the rights of agricultural operators to agricultural land,is an important method to optimize the allocation of resources.The further separation of agricultural land ownership,contract right and management right provides operation space for the allocation of agricultural land property rights resources,and also provides a basis for farmers’ production cooperation.In this context,this paper tentatively brings the intensity of farmland tenure strength and the cooperative behavior of farmers’ wheat production into the same research framework,with a view to further exploring the optimization mechanism of farmers’ combined tillage and households-joint management driven by the legal empowerment,social recognition and the behavioral capacity of property rights.Based on the theory of planned behavior,transaction cost theory and property rights theory,this paper constructs a theoretical logic framework of farmland tenure strength and farmers’ willingness and decision-making to cooperate in production;According to the reference group theory and the game equilibrium theory,this paper constructs the social interaction effect framework of the three-dimensional degree of farmland tenure strength on the farmers’ production cooperation decision;According to the theory of differential order pattern and the theory of kinship altruism,this paper constructs the mechanism framework the farmland tenure strength and the choice of farmers’ production cooperation objects;According to the theory of division and cooperation and the theory of factor endowments,the logical framework of the impact of farmland tenure strength on the degree of farmers’ production cooperation is constructed.Based on the survey data of 857 farmers in Henan and Shanxi which belong to Huang-huai winter wheat areas,this paper measures the legal empowerment,social identity and the behavioral ability of the property rights subjects of the farmland tenure strength,and analyzes the current situation of the farmland tenure strength of farmers.And measures the willingness,decision-making,object selection and degree of farmers’ combined-tillage and households-joint management,and evaluate the current situation of farmers’ combined-tillage plus households-joint management.Using Probit model and Bi-Probit model,this paper empirically tests the impact of legal empowerment,social identity and behavioral capacity of property rights subjects on farmers’ willingness and decision-making and the transformation of willingness and decision in production cooperation;The Spatial-Econometric model is used to empirically test the social interaction effect between the farmland tenure strength and farmers’ decision-making in production cooperation;The Order-Probit model is used to empirically test the impact of the farmland tenure on the choice of farmers’ production partners;The Zero-Poisson model is used to empirically test the impact of the farmland tenure strength on the degree of farmers’ combined tillage and households-joint management.Based on this,the paper puts forward some policy measures to improve the stability and clarity of empowerment,enhance the rationality of social identity and enhance the behavioral capacity of property rights subjects,in order to develop farmers’ combined tillage and households-joint management from multiple angles,and realize the effective connection between peasants and modern agriculture.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Farmland tenure strength has different effects on farmers’ willingness,decision-making and the transformation of willing behavior in production cooperation.First,the three-dimensional of farmland tenure strength is positively promoting farmers’ willingness in combined tillage and households-joint management.Legal empowerment from the perspective of authority,social identity from the perspective of fact,and property rights subjects capacity from the perspective of property implementation capacity,gives recognition to promote the implementation of farmers’ farmland property tenure,enhance farmers’ confidence in obtaining cooperation benefits and the sense of security of cooperation,and promote the occurrence of farmers’ combined tillage and households-joint management.Second,the three-dimensional of farmland tenure strength,which means legal empowerment,social identity and property rights subjects capacity,is positively promoting the farmers’ decision in combined tillage.And the impact of the strength of farmland tenure on households-joint management is mainly reflected in the capacity of property rights subjects,more specifically,the exclusivity and transaction ability promote households-joint mangement while the disposal ability has the opposite effect.Third,the improvement of the social identity dimension of farmland property tenure strength and the property rights subjects capacity will urge farmers to implement the willingness to behavior of combined-tillage;The exclusive ability significantly promotes the transformation of the willingness to behavior in households-joint mangement,oppositely,the disposal ability has a negative impact.(2)The strength of farmland tenure not only directly affects the decision-making of farmers’ production cooperation,but also has a social interaction effect.That is,the adoption of combined tillage and households-joint management is affected by the exclusive ability and transaction ability of other members of the group.When the other members of the group have stronger exclusive ability and transaction ability,the group has stronger ability to communicate and negotiate,obtain cooperation surplus and reduce sunk costs.Which can help farmers get more price advantage in cooperative purchase,enhance the farmers’ confidence and safety perception of production cooperation,and promote the farmers’ combined tillage and households-joint management within the group.(3)The strength of farmland tenure affects the choice of farmers’ production cooperation objects.Farmers with strong legal empowerment of farmland and property rights capacity are more inclined to choose new business subjects for production cooperation,and farmers with high social identity are more inclined to choose farmers with blood and geographical relations for production cooperation.At the same time,the legal empowerment dimension of farmland tenure and the property rights subjects capacity dimension can mitigate the impact of differential order pattern on the choice of farmers’ production cooperation objects by reducing farmers’ risk perception.That is,with the improvement of legal empowerment and the enhancement of farmers’ exclusive ability,transaction ability and disposal ability,farmers’ economic risk perception,psychological risk perception and situational risk perception in production cooperation can be effectively reduced.Farmers’ ability to cooperate with new business entities can be enhanced,and the role of differential pattern in the selection of farmers’ production cooperation objects can be weakened.The social identity dimension of the farmland property tenure strength will weaken the risk perception between farmers and enhance the trust between farmers,but will deepen the role of the differential order pattern in the selection of farmers’ production cooperation objects.(4)The strength of farmland tenure also affects the degree of farmers’ production cooperation.On the one hand,the impact of farmland tenure strength on the degree of combined tillage can be divided into three levels.Firstly,the legal empowerment and the transaction ability and exclusive ability in the property rights subjects capacity significantly promote the degree of combined tillage,while the social identity and the disposal ability in the property rights subjects capacity have no significant impact on the degree of combined tillage in capital intensive links;Secondly,the legal empowerment,and social identity,as well as the property rights subjects capacity,have significantly promoted the degree of combined tillage in technology intensive links;Thirdly,the legal empowerment,and social identity,as well as the transaction ability and exclusive ability significantly enhance the degree of combined tillage in labor-intensive links,while the disposal ability has no significant impact on it.The farmland property tenure strength has different effects on the degree of different types of households-joint management.For farmers’ help and change of work,social identity and the transaction ability and the exclusive ability significantly promote the degree of connection between farmers’ help and change of work,while the disposal ability hinders farmers’ help and change of work in different production links.Legal empowerment has no significant impact on the degree of farmers’ help and change of work;For the combination of agricultural means of production and agricultural machinery,legal empowerment,and the transaction ability,and exclusive ability significantly promote the degree of the combination of agricultural means of production and agricultural machinery,while the disposal ability has no significant impact on it.