Social Capital,credit Availability,and Farmers’ Entrepreneurial Decision

Actively guiding and promoting farmers to start businesses can not only help entrepreneurs to realize their own values,but also have a very important significance for alleviating employment pressure,coordinating urban and rural economic development,and optimizing industrial structure.In recent years,the CPC Central Committee has attached great importance to rural innovation and entrepreneurship,and implemented a series of policies and measures to support entrepreneurship,which have strongly boosted the development of farmers’ entrepreneurship.However,in addition to the policy measures,farmers are also affected by social capital,entrepreneurial capital and other factors.This paper systematically analyzes the logical mechanism by which social capital and the three dimensions of social capital,namely social network,social trust and reciprocity norm,positively influence the entrepreneurial decisions of farmers,taking farmers nationwide as the research object.At the same time,this paper introduces the issue of peasant households’ entrepreneurial financing,elaborates the positive effect of the availability of formal credit and informal credit on peasant households’ entrepreneurial decision-making,and the mediating role of credit availability in the influence mechanism of "social capital-peasant households’ entrepreneurial decision-making".Based on the cross-sectional data of the China Household Tracking Survey(CFPS)in 2018,this paper uses empirical analysis methods such as factor analysis,binary logistic regression,and mediating effect test to examine the impact of social capital and credit availability on farmers’ entrepreneurial decision,and the mediating effect of credit availability on social capital and farmers’ entrepreneurial decision.The main conclusions are as follows: social capital can significantly affect farmers’ entrepreneurial decisions,and social networks and reciprocity norms can actively promote farmers’ entrepreneurial decisions;The avail ability of formal and informal credit has a significant positive impact on the entrepreneurial decisions of farmers.In the influence path of social capital on peasant households’ entrepreneurial decision,the availability of formal and informal credit both plays a partial mediating effect.Based on the above research conclusions,this paper puts forward three enlightenment from strengthening social capital accumulation,creating a good entrepreneurial environment and broadening rural credit channels.