Cost-benefit Analysis Of Farmers’ Participation In Farmland Consolidation Project Planning And Design

Farmers’participation can improve the quality of the farmland consolidation project, improve the local farmers’ satisfaction, and ensure the smooth operation of the farmland consolidation project. But some questions like farmers’participation will produce what kind of impacts to the relevant stakeholders, and what’s the internal mechanism of low degree of farmers’participation in current farmland consolidation project are not known. Farmers’participation in farmland consolidation project is a kind of system innovation, only in grasping the participation’s effects to the relevant stakeholders’costs and benefits, can we understand their attitude to farmers’participation, and finally understand the status of farmers’participation and its internal mechanism. This paper takes farmers’ participation in farmland consolidation project planning and design for example, builds a theoretical analysis framework about the effects of farmers’participation on relevant stakeholders’costs and benefits; Using the questionnaire survey data, quantitative measures the changes of rural households’ and planning and design organizations’ monetary costs and benefits, qualitative analysis the important degree and the change trend of rural households’and planning and design organizations’non-monetary costs and benefits.Through the research, this paper gets the following conclusion:(1) In the circumstances of farmers’participation, the mean value of monetary cost which the rural households took is121.09Yuan, the minimum value is5.73Yuan, the maximum value is700Yuan, the large differences of monetary cost which the rural households took come from some village cadres is not only organizers, but also participants, the number of their participation is more, and the time of their participation is longer compared with the ordinary farmers. However, in the circumstances of farmers’ participation, the mean value of monetary income which the rural households gained is27.12Yuan, the minimum value is0Yuan, the maximum value is200Yuan. The differences also come from the resources are in the hands of part of the village cadres, it can make their participation obtain more benefits. The monetary cost which the rural households took is generally greater than monetary income which the rural households gained. Farmers generally believe that the monetary cost and the monetary income have litter influence on their families. But on the whole, the influence degree of the monetary cost is greater than the monetary income. When talking about monetary cost, farmers generally believe that the communication cost, transportation cost and opportunity cost have litter effect on their families. Relatively, they believe the effect of opportunity cost is bigger, next is communication cost and last is transportation cost. (2) In the circumstances of farmers’participation, the farmers’non-monetary cost like energy expenditure, mental spending and psychological burden objective exists. Statistical studies have shown that the effect of psychological burden is bigger, next is energy expenditure and last is mental spending. The performance of psychological burden comes from that worry their participation is symbolic, afraid of public gossip, and the planning and design staff do not take on their own opinions. However, in the circumstances of farmers’participation, the farmers’non-monetary income like improve their quality, achieve their civil rights, increase their existence value also objective exists. Statistical studies have shown that farmers often give more importance to achieve their civil rights, next to increase their existence value, and last to improve their quality. Thus, it can be seen that there is a certain psychological burden to farmers, but they also objectively recognize the participation will bring their rights promotion, value realization and improve their own quality.(3) In the circumstances of farmers’participation, the mean value of monetary cost increment which the planning and design organizations took is1260.59Yuan, the minimum value is516.95Yuan, the maximum value is3350.56Yuan, the large differences of monetary cost increment which the planning and design organizations took come from regional differences and the organizations’ emphasis on planning and design work. But due to lack of reward and punishment mechanism in the process of paying for planning and design fee, the planning and design organizations’monetary income increment are all0. The monetary cost increment which planning and design organizations took is generally greater than monetary income increment which planning and design organizations gained.(4) Farmers participate in farmland consolidation project planning indeed increase the planning and design staffs’pains to coordinate the contradiction between villagers and villages. The effects of this increased pains to the planning and design organizations are the staffs are exhausted, discontent, inefficient, and delay the time, furthermore, may lead the staff careless and the quality of the achievement is low. Statistical studies have shown that the effects of this non-monetary cost on the planning and design organizations objective exist, and in individual cases may have great influence on the planning and design organizations. Most of the planning and design organizations believe that farmers’ participation can improve their reputation, the influences of the reputation mainly manifest that the staff have a sense of accomplishment, the improvement of their profile and performance, and they can get more projects in the local. In spite of this, the planning and design organizations believe that the effect of the reputation improvement is small on their benefit. Therefore, in order to improve the degree of farmers’effective participation in farmland consolidation project, government should take the following measures. Firstly, government should establish and perfect effective participation mechanism, raising the net income of farmers. Secondly, government should establish communication and coordination organizations in farmland consolidation project, and dredge the channel for farmers’ opinion expression to improve the efficiency of farmers’participation in farmland consolidation. Thirdly, government should establish reward and punishment mechanism for the planning and design results, explore new contract of payment between the owners and the planning and design organizations. Finally, government should set up new project bidding mechanism in farmland consolidation, and bring the reputation of the planning and design organizations into the assessment.