The Research Of Farmers Participating Provision Of Rural Community Public Goods In Guangdong Province Based On Social Capital Theory

Nowadays, with the improvement of farmer’s income and their awareness to enhance lifequality, more and more public goods are needed in rural areas. Not only rural infrastructure isstill a strong demand, but also public goods of education, insurance and sanitation etc. arestrongly demanded. As the demand is great and the fund is limited, the government, villagesand farms should cooperate to supply public goods. There is no doubt that it is important tobuild mechanisms of cooperation among the three providers. As farmers are the ultimatebeneficiary, to research factors impacting farmers’ wiliness to participate in the supply ofpublic goods is particularly necessary. As the rural communities have a long history andfamilies live in one community are almost fixed, the degree of familiarity between villagers ismuch higher than the urban community. Based on that, we think social capital is an importantfactor to impact farmers’ wiliness to supply public goods.This paper firstly reviews the public goods theories and social capital theories. Based onthese theories, social capital is supposed to be an important factor in farmers’ participatingprovision of rural public goods. Then the mechanism of how social capital impact farmers’participating provision is constructed. Besides, this paper studies the influencing factors offarmers participating provision rural community public goods using the surveying data ofmore than six hundred farmers in4counties in Guangdong province. Data from developedareas and underdeveloped areas are analyzed separately and a comparative analysis is done.Through Logistic model, we found that the transparency of public expenditures, whetherfarmers trust on other villagers, neighbors’ participation affect farmers’ participating provisionsignificantly. While trust and social networks are important components of social capital,empirical research shows that social capital affect farmers’ participating provisionsignificantly. Besides, social capital has a strong explanatory power in the difference betweendeveloped areas and underdeveloped areas. Finally, the paper gives policy recommendations.The main innovation of this paper is the selection of the research perspective and the researchmethods.