Exploring The Mechanism And Effect Of Peasants’ Effective Participation Improving Performance Of Rural Land Consolidation Project

Rural land consolidation(RLC) is an essential way to increase the area of arable land, improve the quality of cultivated land, and guarantee the national food security;meanwhile, it is also an effective approach to promote the development of new socialist countryside and agricultural modernization. Since 2001, China has increased more than50 million mu(3.33 million hectares) cultivated land by RLC; furthermore China built300 million mu(20 million hectares) fundamental farmland with high standard and scale in 2011-2014. Through RLC, the food production and quality of these farmland has a great improvement, which makes RLC achieve good result. However, there are still many problems in the RLC, such as the unreasonable location, planning and design of project,the poor quality of construction, the lack of management and protection after construction, the low utilization rate of project facilities and so on. In order to solve these problems, the government and local land management departments encourage and guide peasants to involve in projects actively, and hope that peasants’ participation could be helpful to improve the project science and rationality in planning and design, enhance the operability and practicability of the RLC, and promote the improvement of RLC performance. Although farmers are encouraged actively to participate in RLC, the scope and degree of farmers’ participation is low and the performance of RLC is still unsatisfying. Therefore, this study proposes the topic—exploring the influence path and effect of farmers’ effective participation(FEP) improving performance of RLC project,and attempt to figure out the internal mechanism which FEP influences the performance of RLC project, at the same time, provide policy reference for improving the performance of RLC further.Firstly, the influence path among FEP, project management behaviors(PMB) and performance of RLC projects was proposed based on the related theories and previous research, and three scientific indicator systems were constructed. Secondly, according to the data collected from 15 land consolidation areas in Hubei province(including plain areas and hilly areas), this paper built a structural equation model(SEM) which was used to analyze the path of FEP affecting land consolidation performance, while the mediating effect model was used to test the rationality of influence path, at the same time the direct effects and indirect effects were calculated. Through quantitative analysis, this study getssome findings which are as follows:Based on the analysis and calculation on two areas’ samples, the results show that the higher degree of FEP, the better PMB, the higher degree of peasants’ satisfaction to RLC performance. Therefore, it is beneficial to improve RLC performance through improving the FEP and promoting the optimization of PMB. However, at present, the relevant laws and supervision mechanism are lack, the farmers are short of awareness and ability on participation in general, and the consciousness of related departments standardizing project management and decision-making is weak, which lead to the formalism of farmers’ participation, the low degree of FEP, and the poor quality of project management and decisions. Thus, most of farmers are dissatisfied with the RLC performance.FEP has a direct positive effect on RLC performance, and also has an indirect positive effect on RLC performance through PMB. Due to the advantages of natural geographical, the path coefficients in plain areas are higher than those in hilly areas, but overall, the empirical analysis results show: FEP has a positive direct effect on the optimization of PMB, while it also has a direct positive impact on land consolidation performance, at the same time land consolidation performance is also positively influenced by FEP directly. So the theoretical influence path is validated.Based on the analysis and calculation on total samples and two areas’ samples, we can find that values which the FEP affects the RLC performance between plain areas and hilly areas are different, but the differences don’t seem to be remarkable. The value of indirect effect making up 85% of total effect is far more than direct effect in different areas and whole process. So the FEP promotes the performance of RLC projects mainly through the PMB. Meanwhile, compared with promoting the performance of RLC projects just by improving the degree of FEP, the performance would be improved significantly if combined with the optimization of PMB.According to the research conclusion, this paper suggests that the relevant government departments can proceed from the following aspects to improve the efficiency of the participation of farmers and promote the improvement of RLC performance: Firstly, the relevant laws and regulations should be further improved, which can establish the main status of farmers in the RLC projects, define their rights and responsibilities, and guarantee the farmers’ right to know, participate, and a certain degree of decision-making. Secondly, the specific systems of implementation on the scope and channels of farmers’ participation should be made to enhance the operability of farmers’ participation, and ensure the FEP. Thirdly, in order to regulate management behaviors,the management and evaluation mechanism used to define these managers’ power,responsibility and interests should be established and improved as soon as possible.Fourth, the relevant supporting mechanisms of coordination, supervision and feedback should be established, which can regulate the behaviors of the parties, coordinate the interests of all parties, and provide protection for improving the efficiency of the parties and the RLC performance.