Crops,Cooperation And Trust Pattern:Empirical Evidence From China

Trust is an important part of social capital,and plays an irreplaceable role in promoting the cooperation among society members,reducing transaction costs and overcoming the dilemma of collective action.In the “differential-order pattern” of China's trust structure,the trust radius of the north and south shows a significant difference,where is the heterogeneity of this trust pattern? From the viewpoint of “rice versus wheat agriculture”,this paper estimates the distinct effects of crops of rice and wheat on different trust pattern between south and north area in China.This paper using series of microscopic database including China Family Panel Studies(2010,2014)and Global Agro-Ecological Zones(2002),The empirical results show that:(1)The level of limited trust in the southern rice region was higher than northern wheat region,while the northern wheat region showed more generalized-trust pattern.In order to obtain a more steady causal inference,we control the possible omitted variables in the baseline model and do a series of robustness tests.This finding is robust to using instrumental variable estimation and placebo test.On average,the level of limited trust in the rice planting areas was 27.3% higher than wheat planting areas,whereas the level of generalized trust was 9.5% less than wheat planting areas.(2)As far as the transmission mechanism is concerned,the different length of the collaboration radius rooted in traditional agricultural production ultimately shapes different patterns of trust.Families who plant rice are more likely to form the limited-trust pattern through the channel of cooperation among their relatives and neighbors during rice production activities.Whereas families who plant wheat are more likely to form the generalized-trust pattern,because the constraint of harvest periods call for cross-regional employment relationship.(3)This paper also tests the persistent effect of trust concept.The heterogeneity of trust patterns in north and south China based on traditional agricultural production not only from the daily agricultural activities,but also through intergenerational transmission from parents to children.By using historical social trust data,this paper finds that the historical trust level and the current agricultural activities each explain one part of the current trust level.Further,in order to examine the importance of trust pattern persistence,we construct the co-residing children-parents pairs.in particular,parents trust in strangers increase one standard deviation,children's trust level ofstrangers will corresponding increase 0.188 standard deviation,and this intergenerational transmission effect of trust concept will increase with the time and frequency of living together with parents is increased.So we find that the long-term impacts of traditional agricultural production on cultural norms may due to the evolution of trust pattern from parents to children.