Acta Agriculturae Zhejiangensis ›› 2024, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (10): 2379-2390.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1004-1524.20230562

• Agricultural Economy and Development • Previous Articles     Next Articles

A study of farmers’ land transfer behavior based on asset specificity theory

YU Weiyong(), ZHAO Fei*(), CHEN Yue   

  1. School of Economics; b. School of Management Science and Engineering, Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, Guiyang 520025, China
  • Received:2023-05-03 Online:2024-10-25 Published:2024-10-30

Abstract:

In order to clarify the impact of asset specificity on households’ land transfer willingness, behavior, and deviation between willingness and behavior, an empical test was carried out by constructing a Logistic model based on the field research data of 274 households in three towns of Puding County, Guizhou Province, China. It was shown that there was deviation between the willingness and behavior of households’ land transfer. The stronger the asset specificity, the weaker the willingness and behavior of land transfer. For the human capital specificity, the planting years had significantly positive influence on the willingness of land transfer, while the number of trainings participated per year, the agricultural production management capacity had significantly negative influence; the planting years and the percentage of labor in agriculture exhibited signifiantly positive and negative effects on the behavior of land transfer, respectively. In terms of land asset specificity, the irrigatino conditions and the average size of plots had significantly negative effects on the willingness of land transfer, yet the soil fertility and the irrigation conditions showed significanlty negative and positive influence on the behavior of land transfer, respectively. The value of agricultural machinery, which was used to represent the physical asset specificity, significanlty negatively affected the willingness and behavior of land transfer. For the geographic location asset specificity, the transport conditions and the distance from village to county towns had significantly negative and positive influence on the willingess of land transfer, respectively, while the distance from village to county towns had significantly negative effect on the behavior of land transfer. The overall impact of asset specificity on the deviation of farmers’ land transfer willingness and behavior was large. In order to strengthen the positive role of asset specificity on the land transfer, the following countermeasures were proposed: 1) revitalize human capital specificity through multiple channels; 2) give full play to the advantages of land resource endowment; 3) enhance the capacity of modern agricultural socialization services; 4) optimize the transportation conditions to improve the famers’ ability to obtain information; 5) improve the supporting policies for land transfer.

Key words: asset specificity, land transfer, willingness, behavior

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