| The structure conflicts of population and land use between urban and rural areas are exerting profound impacts on the transitional Chinese social and economic development. With the yearly increasing urbanization, a large number of rural surplus labor force flood into cities and towns for job and living opportunities. These Rural-urban migrates, who spend almost their whole daily life in cities and towns, still have their own houses (at least one house per household) in rural areas. Although the rural land are increasingly reduced due to the urban sprawling, the rural housing land tends to grow in many rural areas, which can not only puts pressure on farmland protection, but also limit the construction land supplies to urban areas and towns. In order to improving the efficiency of rural housing land use, and protecting cultivated land resources practically, and easing the conflicts of supplies and demands of construction land between rural and urban areas, it is wise to standard the construction of rural housing land, and guide the housing land transfer rationally, and bring the abandoned and idle housing land into the track of land market allocation, in the process of rural and urban development coordination and urban-rural integration. Furthermore, these effects also help farmers to obtain property income through turning the land asset into cash, which may reduce their cost when entering and living in small towns or industrial districts. These theories and views have been generally accepted and concerned by many scholars.There are evident differences in the focus of housing land transfer between home and abroad, due to the inconformity of the rural development stages. Most foreign literatures looked at the conflicts between the rural and urban areas, the needs of immigrates and rural development from the view of farm households. However, most domestic scholars did their researches from the view of market and political system and did not pay enough attention on the households'thought on rural housing land transfer. The existing progresses are around the analysis of barriers and driving forces, the integrity of law and organization, the economy of system and market, and the evaluation of policy implementation. Hence, it is urgent for us to study the rural housing land transfer on the perspective of household's livelihood. In this thesis, rural households were investigated thoroughly based on the behavioral motivation theory and sociological rational choice theory, and we also built up a theoretical framework about how to maximize the comprehensive benefits for rural households in the process of "transfer basis—decision-making—decision consequences". On the basis of rural household's livelihood diversification, Target MOTAD model was used to analysis the diversification decision-making of each household type, and the response of housing land patterns to livelihood diversification was discussed by the method of statistical analysis and landscape ecology. Furthermore, decision-making factors of housing land transfer in survival, economic and social levels were extracted using logistic regression model. Also, the balance of decision-making between the expected profits and investment risk way was modeled using the investment risk decision-making model. Finally, some corresponding suggestions on the strategies of housing land transfer from the perspective of rural household's livelihood were given. The study area of this thesis: Yunyang County, located in the region of Three Gorges Reservoir, Chongqing, China, was taken as it is a typical poverty-stricken county in China. Through the way of Participatory Rural Appraisal,568 rural households in Fengming, Nanxi and Qixia towns (2 villages per town) was surveyed to collect about ten thousand data associated with the structure of households, the use of housing land and the decision-making psychology of housing land transfer.According to the research hypothesis, rural household surveys and empirical analysis, the conclusions are as follows.(1) The rural households have been increasingly taking part in diverse production activities apart from farming in remote mountain areas. According to the ratio of off-farm income to the total income and the proportion of off-farm workforce inputs, we classified rural households into five groups:full-farm, farm-dominated, half-farm, non-farm-dominated and non-farm households. The off-farm proportion of rural households'livelihood was positively correlated with the risk of livelihood and family income. Full-farm and farm-dominated households are highly dependent on agriculture production. They plant grains and breed pigs mainly to ensure basic income, and partly plant economic crops and rear goats to raise revenue, and also involve in some temporary off-farm work to spend their non-farm periods. Half-farm, off-farm-dominated and off-farm households tended to gradually or totally rely on off-farm activities. They participate in physical labor and service work to guarantee basic income, and partly work on technical and business activities to increase revenue, also retain a few grains and pigs farming for family self-sufficiency.(2) The rural households'livelihood diversification has a great impact on their housing land use activities. The main part of livelihood (on-farm or off-from) is an important factor to the scale, structure and function configuration of housing land. Of full-farm and farm-dominated households, the housing land scale per family which indicates extensive utilization varied slightly. Comparing with the farm-dominated households, full-farm households used a large proportion of land for rearing livestock and storing groceries except for housing themselves. The housing land of half-farm households expands and indicates a relatively intensive and less diverse residential land use. For half-farm households, they reduce the storing land and increase the housing land for enlarged residential spaces. Of non-farm-dominated and non-farm households who almost drop all their farming activities, their housing land area per family tends to be lessen and be more intensive and less diverse.(3)The methods of sociological rational choice theory and logistics analysis were employed to explore the decision-making factors of housing land transfer in different livelihood types of households. The results indicated that, in general, the level of housing land transfer were low and declined from full-farm to off-farm households. The decision-making factors of housing land transfer varied among different households:full-farm households which were likely to have a rational decision on survival hold the willingness of more than 60%, aiming at improving their survival environment through housing land transfer; farm-dominated households which made decisions primarily based on economic rationality and followed on survival decision hold the willingness of, about 40%, since they temporary depend on agricultural production; the same phenomenon occur in half-farm households; off-farm-dominated and non-farm households whose decisions are depend on social rationality consider maintaining a house in the rural as their living retreats, and hold the willingness of around 30%.(4) The results of rural household housing land transfer choices modeling through the risk decision-making model shows that full-farm and farm-dominated households concern more about the less capacity to pay for their new houses, so the majority of them choose to participate in rural housing land transfer in the way of migrants resettlement, new village construction, and self-construction. If they can receive for better living conditions through "union resettlement", they would prefer to give up agricultural production or the rights of rural contracted land use. However, the half-farm, off-farm-dominated and off-farm households pay more attention on the instability of non-farm work, or partly on the pay capacity for new houses. If they can get guarantee of future livelihood, they would like to transfer their housing land by participating in the new village construction, constructing new houses independently or moving out to another place, and so on.(5) The varied responses of households with different types of livelihood to livelihood risks, and the different decision-making of household housing land transfer suggest that the targeted policy for rural household housing land transfer should be developed according to the needs of each household. The full-farm and farm-dominated households were sensitive to the decrease of marginal efficiency of agriculture, so the policy should be carried out to guide rural households to use housing land intensively and economically through stabilizing and expensing agricultural production. The half-farm, off-farm-dominated and off-farm households were sensitive to the non-farm activities, such as education of children, employment, health care, pension, and so on. Therefore, it should be better to break the dual urban-rural land system and carried out the policy with the same land, price and right between urban and rural land to improve urban and rural social security system. And it also requires that rural residents could enjoy equal social benefits with urban residents, which will reduce the burden of non-farm livelihoods for rural households and encourage them to release their idled housing land. |
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