Study On The Off-farm Employment Behavior Of Farmers And Herdsmen In The Tibetan Area Of Northwest Sichuan

Tibetan area of northwest Sichuan is located in the border region of Sichuan,Gansu,Qinghai and Tibet provinces.It is an especial area where the poverty-stricken area overlaps with the crucially ecological area in China,and sets national minority inhabitation,multidimensional poverty intertwined,ecologically fragile,lag of economic development and remoteness at an organic whole.Traditional agriculture and animal husbandry are the main employment fields of local rural labor force.Under the dual pressure of poverty governance and ecological protection,off-farm transfer has become the inevitable trend of farmers and herdsmen's livelihood transformation.However,omnifarious barriers that farmers and herdsmen has been dominated,such as,shortage of individual human capital stock,lack of family endowment,conservative cultural concepts,relatively backward market development,remote location and traffic discommodity and so on,make the research of promoting farmers and herdsmen off-farm transfer a long way to go.Employment is the foundation of people's livelihood.Especially,as for the farmers and herdsmen who have trapped in relative poverty in the Tibetan areas of northwest Sichuan,the transfer from traditional agriculture and animal husbandry to modern off-farm industries is undoubtedly an effective way to achieve personal development,improve family income and shake off poverty.And for local governments,promoting surplus rural labor to off-farm employment field,it is undoubtedly a strong support for easing the ecological bearing pressure and realizing regional economic and social development.The analysis of the off-farm employment behavior of farmers and herdsmen from a micro perspective provides a deeper logical perspective to comprehend the internal mechanism of the behavior and a more accurate theoretical basis for effectively promoting the off-farm transformation.So how does the off-farm employment behavior of farmers and herdsmen bring about? What factors contribute to the given behavior? How do these factors exert impacts on the given behavior? How to explain these influence paths? And how to propose more accurate and effective employment promotion policies according to different influence paths?In response to these above questions,this paper makes corresponding explanations from the theoretical and empirical aspects.In terms of theoretical analysis,this paper structures an analytical framework of "Endowment-Intension" to explain the off-farm employment behavior of farmers and herdsmen.Firstly,based on the hypothesis of "entirely rationality",this paper analyzes the influence of the endowments of individuals and their family on offfarm employment behavior by referring to the model of "labor-leisure".Secondly,this paper refers to the Theory of Planned Behavior,and relaxes the hypothesis of " entirely rationality" to the hypothesis of "bounded rationality",thereby explaining where does the off-farm employment intention comes from and what effects does the given intention on their off-farm employment behavior.Thirdly,this paper then analyzes the interrelationship between endowments and intentions,and concludes that the external endowments have a unidirectional influence path on the internal intentions.On the other hand,this paper carries on empirical analysis on three dimensional aspects: the first is to depict the basic characteristics of off-farm employment of farmers and herdsmen by the means of descriptive statistical;the second is to analyze the influence path of endowments on off-farm employment behavior of farmers and herdsmen;the third is to analyze the impacts of intention of farmers and herdsmen on their off-farm employment behavior.Based on the above analysis content,the results of this paper can be roughly summarized into three parts:First,through the descriptive statistics of the current situation of off-farm employment of farmers and herdsmen,this paper finds that :(1)local off-farm employment is a better choice of farmers and herdsmen under the dual influence of endowment and will;(2)parttime employment is the main form of local off-farm employment for farmers and herdsmen.The fact that traditional agricultural and animal husbandry production does not require much labor force,therefore enables most farmers and herdsmen have enough time to engage in parttime business in the local area after completing family production.The survey results showed that farmers and herdsmen with part-time work accounted for 69.68% of the total sample number of off-farm employment.Secondly,this paper analyzes how endowment of farmers and herdsmen and their family exerts external impact on the off-farm employment behavior under the "endowment-behavior" influence path.And we find that men,have a spouse,affected by the higher education level,employment information channel is more effective,the lower the intensity of training,family total dependency ratio is lower,the less arable land per capita,the nearer to the county,the higher the elevation of dwelling,the higher probability of off-farm transformation.As a consequence,endowment of farmers and herdsmen determines their incentive and efficiency to engage in off-farm employment,and their family endowment constitutes the micro-social environment of off-farm transformation,which objectively affects the off-farm employment behavior of its family members.Thirdly,based on the influence path of "intention ? behavior",this paper analyzes the internal formation mechanism of farmers and herdsmen's off-farm employment,and finds that :(1)intention can significantly promote farmers and herdsmen's off-farm employment,but the effect is not obvious.Results show that only 14.7% of the off-farm employment of farmers and herdsmen can be significantly explained by intention,indicating that the influence path of "intention ? behavior" lacks the explanatory power for the off-farm employment.(2)ability perception is the leading factor for farmers and herdsmen to produce off-farm employment.According to the results of model estimation,the indirect effect of PBC on farmers and herdsmen's off-farm employment through intention is too low,but the direct effect on this behavior is significantly 0.747,indicating that the main psychological factor affecting farmers and herdsmen's off-farm transformation is their perception of the difficulty of the execution.Based on the conclusions above,this paper proposes that local governments can improve employment promotion policies from the following aspects.Firstly,it is necessary to accumulate and optimize the human capital of farmers and herdsmen by means of eliminating illiteracy among adult farmers and herdsmen forcefully and exploring 12-years compulsory education,thereby improving the quality of investment in regular education system.And then,we should also optimize the skill training mechanism for farmers and herdsmen with a specific standing book,a reward and punishment mechanism and an evaluation mechanism,with the aim of identifying and eliminating subsidy-dependent individuals effectively,and providing skill training services sincerely for farmers and herdsmen who with the intention of off-farm transformation.Secondly,local governments could create more off-farm jobs through cultivating local green off-farm industries.Specifically,efforts should be made to support the local collective economy,mainly in the form of rural cooperatives,with the development of local industries as the starting point,to enhance the self-organization ability of farmers and herdsmen,and to drive their transformation to off-farm fields;In addition,based on the advantages of ethnic culture,natural resources and preferential policies,local governments should carry out a more rational layout of off-farm industries development and off-farm jobs creation.Thirdly,local governments also need to strengthen employment services for farmers and herdsmen,and eradicate major obstacles of off-farm transformation.Measures should be carried out critically,that transfer the traditional concept of employment of farmers and herdsmen that satisfied with poverty and content with the status quo;that intensify the influence of grassroots government in the transfer process of employment information,which thereby changing the information weakness status of farmers and herdsmen in the labor market;and that improve the off-farm transformation ability of farmers and herdsmen by means of increasing investment in necessary infrastructure construction and continuing the settlement project for herdsmen.