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ISSN : 1225-8504(Print)
ISSN : 2287-8165(Online)

Journal of the Korean Society of International Agriculture Vol.34 No.2 pp.93-99
DOI : https://doi.org/10.12719/KSIA.2022.34.2.93

Study on Factors Influencing Farmers' Willingness to Transfer Land - Based on the Binary Logistic Model

Shuang-yu Hu

, Bobah Brillant Sisang

, Shi-yong Piao

, Zhi-run Li

, Yu-cong Sun

, Sung-chan Kim

, Jong-In Lee^†

Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Kangwon National University, South Korea

^† Corresponding author (Phone) +82-33-250-8668 (E-mail) leejongin@kangwon.ac.kr

Received March 15, 2021 Review March 29, 2022 Accepted April 4, 2022

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which influencing factors impact the transference willingness of farmers. The research method is based on the survey data on transference willingness, and the binary logistic model was used to analyze the influencing factors. The results show that the educational level, annual household income, farm labor, and farmers' understanding of land transfer policy notably influence land transfer. Based on the results, suggestions include improving farmers' social security system, improving a sound market for rural land transfer, and deepening the promotion and explanation of land-related policies.

Key Words : Land transfer , Transference willingness , Binary logistic model , Influencing factors

중국 하북성 탕산시 농업인의 토지유통 의사에 영향을 미치는 요인에 관한 연구

호 쌍우

, 보하 브릴란트 시상

, 박세영

, 이지윤

, 손우총

, 김성찬

, 이종인^†

강원대학교 농업자원경제학과

초록

키워드 :

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INTRODUCTION

Land problem is one of the core of China's “three rural” issues and is the basis of the stable development of rural areas. Rural land transfer can promote the fragmentation of cultivated land in China and solve agricultural production inefficiency, which is of great significance to realize the modernization of agriculture. With the increasing level of urbanization in China, many rural laborers have flocked to the cities, resulting in the abandonment of rural land. The decentralized family contract management method can hardly meet modern agriculture and industrialized operation requirements, making it an inevitable trend to develop land management on a moderate scale. By advancing rural land transfer, it can play a vital role in rationalizing land resources, realizing the effective allocation of land resources, increasing farmers' income and improving the living standards of farmers, and boosting agricultural industrialization and modernization.

As for the rural land transfer, Chinese scholars mainly conduct empirical studies on farmers' intention to transfer their land, influencing factors, land transfer performance, and farmers' decision-making mechanism for land transfer using econometric methods. Bao Zongshun et al. (2009) conducted an empirical analysis of the regional differences, influencing factors, and existing problems of rural land transfer in Jiangsu Province based on a large number of rural social surveys and with the help of the second national agricultural census and statistics on rural land transfer from government departments. Zhao Xiaoqiu et al. (2009) analyzed the factors affecting farmers' intention to transfer their land using the structural equation model based on the field survey data in Chongqing. Their study showed that grain prices hurt farmers' intention to transfer their land, while farmers' risk expectations of natural disaster, rent recovery risk, and rent per unit area positively affected farmers' intention to transfer their land. Han Xinghuan and Tian Lu (2012) conducted field surveys in 24 villages in 6 counties and cities in Jilin Province as samples to analyze farmers' intention to transfer their land. In terms of farmers' household income, farmers whose planting income accounts for a large proportion of household income are reluctant to give up the right to use land. However, with the increase of non-agricultural income, it is beneficial to promote cultivated land transfer. With the development of China's economy and society, the land has become more and more scarce, and the price of cultivated land has increased accordingly, making the years of transferring the land correlated with farmers' intention to transfer the land. Ye Nan (2013) studied the survey data in four provinces in central China based on the binary logistic regression model. His investigation results showed that most farmers are less willing to transfer their land and even less willing to contract land for farming. In terms of farmers' intention to transfer out their land, the older farmers do not want to transfer out their land because of the solid local sentiment, and the farmers who occupy the plain areas suitable for farming do not want to transfer out their land. Also, farmers with family addresses and pension insurance are reluctant to transfer their land.

As for farmers' intention to transfer-in some land, some professional farmers want to expand their contracted area through land transfer to improve their business efficiency further. Fan Qiaoxi et al. (2017) investigated the farmers in typical hilly areas of Sichuan and Chongqing and analyzed farmers' transfer intention model, transfer-out intention model, and transfer-in intention model through binary logistic regression analysis from seven aspects: farmers' family characteristics, income characteristics, contracted land characteristics, transfer process characteristics, government behavior, social security, and social relationship factors. The results showed that farmers' labor situation had a significant effect on transferring out of farmland, and the per capita income of families had a significant effect on the transfer of farmland. The proportion of non-farm income contracted land area, and land type had significant effects on the transfer-out and transfer-in of land. Based on research data from poor mountainous counties in Hebei province, Hu Yanling et al. (2018) used a binary logistic regression model to establish an indicator system for farmers' situation, family situation, and land policy recognition. They empirically analyzed the influencing factors of land transfer intention. Moreover, they used cross-over analysis to determine the match between land transfer intention and land transfer behavior.

In Tangshan City, with a solid foundation for developing agriculture, more rural laborers have moved to secondary and tertiary industries, and the rural land management population has rapidly decreased with the rapid development of secondary and tertiary industries in recent years, making land transfer an inevitable result of agricultural and rural development. As of December 2020, the land area of which the management right had been transferred in Tangshan reached 1,990,300 mu, of which 1,423,400 mu was for land of 20 mu or more. In practical land transfer, our study focuses on promoting the effective transfer of rural land in Tangshan City, ensuring that farmers' basic rights are not infringed on under the premises of fairness and resources, vigorously developing agricultural productivity, and increase farmers' income. Based on the survey of farmers in Tangshan City, this study empirically analyzes farmers' intention to transfer-out their land and its influencing factors to provide a scientific basis for building a perfect land transfer system.

THEORETICAL BASIS AND RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

Farmers as rational brokers under the guidance of comparative interests, participate in land transfer and decide whether to transfer land through the comprehensive judgment of their family conditions and social and economic environment. Therefore, in this study, the factors affecting farmers' land transfer willingness are divided into nine sub-indicators in three categories.

1) In this paper, three variables were selected to represent farmers' characteristics, farmers' gender (X1), age (X2), and educational level (X3). Generally speaking, rural men have more opportunities to contact the outside world and receive more information from the outside world than women, and men are more aware of new policies and technologies. As a result, their intention to transfer their land is more vital than women's (Table 1). The older the farmers, the stronger their land transfer intention because their ability to manage the land gradually decreases. The higher the educational level of farmers, the more opportunities for non-agricultural employment, and therefore the more substantial the intention to transfer the land.
2) Farmers' family characteristics. In this study, three variables, annual household income (X₄), number of farm machinery (X₅), and farm labor (X₆), were selected to reflect the farmers' family characteristics. The higher the farmers' annual income, the more diversified income sources income, the more farmers can no longer rely onthe land alone to increase their income. Therefore, the higher the farmers' annual income, the stronger their intention to transfer the land. The more farm machinery farmers have and the more farm laborers they have, the more dependent they are on agriculture and the more eager they are to improve their quality of life through farm income hence as such their intention to transfer out their land is weak.
3) Extrinsic characteristic variables. Regarding the extrinsic characteristics, this study selected three variables: farmers' understanding of national land transfer policy (X₇), farmers' expectation of land transfer rent (X₈), and farmers' expectation of lease term for the land transferred (X₉). The more farmers have a deep understanding of the national land transfer policy or the potential benefits, the more positive their attitude towards land transfer, and the stronger their intention to transfer their land. Farmers have good expectations of the rent they will receive from the land transfer. The higher their expectation of land rent, the stronger their intention to transfer land. Also, the higher the lease term of farmers for land transfer, the more farmers can be assured of land transfer and better carry out non-farm work. Therefore, the higher the farmers' expectations for the lease term of the land to be transferred, the stronger their willingness to transfer the land.

DATA AND RESEARCH METHOD

The data used in this study were obtained from a field survey of 26 villages in 7 counties and districts in Tangshan, China, including Qianan, Zunhua, Luanzhou, Luannan, Laoting, Qianxi and Yutian by students from October to December 2020. The field survey was conducted by 8 students majoring in economics at the Tangshan Normal University. A number of households were selected from each village to conduct a one-to-one questionnaire survey. A total of 302 questionnaires were sent out in this survey, and 294 were effectively received, with an effective rate of 97.35%.

Among the respondents, most of the surveyed farmers were male, accounting for 61.22% of the respondents' total number. The age of the respondents was mainly in the age range of 31-60. The education level was generally low, with 53.06% of farmers with junior high school degrees and 24.49% of farmers with elementary school degrees. The farmers' annual household income was mainly below 30,000 RMB, accounting for 88.77% of the total respondents surveyed, indicating that farmers' annual income was low (Table 2). Among the 294 farmers who participated in the land transfer intention survey, 147 farmers were willing to transfer their land, accounting for 50% of the total number of farmers surveyed. Compared with the national rate of farmers willing to transfer their land at 17.8%, Tangshan farmers had higher intentions to transfer their land.

Model and variable description

In this study, an empirical model of farmers' intention to transfer their land in Tangshan City was developed, and the factors influencing farmers' land transfer were analyzed using a binary logistic model. The explained variable is farmers' willingness to transfer land. The dependent variable was set to be Y. A value of 1 indicated that farmers wanted to transfer their land, and a value of 0 indicated that farmers did not want to transfer their land. The m independent variables affecting the explanatory variable Y are denoted as X₁, X₂, ..., X_m (1≤m≤10). The probability that a farmer wants to transfer land is p (Y=1|X)=p_i, while 1-p_i is the probability that a farmer does not want to transfer land, both of which are nonlinear functions of the independent variable X:

p_{i} = \frac{1}{1 + e^{- (α + \sum_{i = 1}^{m} β_{i} x_{i})}} = \frac{e^{α + \sum_{i = 1}^{m} β_{i} x_{i}}}{1 + e^{α + \sum_{i = 1}^{m} β_{i} x_{i}}}

(1)

1 - p_{i} = 1 - \frac{e^{α + \sum_{i = 1}^{m} β_{i} x_{i}}}{1 + e^{α + \sum_{i = 1}^{m} β_{i} x_{i}}} = \frac{1}{1 + e^{α + \sum_{i = 1}^{m} β_{i} x_{i}}}

(2)

The ratio of the probability that a farmer wants to transfer the land to the probability that a farmer does not want to transfer the land, Pi/1-Pi, is called the odds ratio. Logarithmically transforming Odds, the linear expression of the logistic regression model is obtained as follows:

ln (\frac{p_{i}}{1 - p_{i}}) = α+ \sum_{i = 1}^{m} β_{i} x_{i}

(3)

This study aims to analyze the factors influencing farmers' willingness to participate in land transfer. When transferring the land, farmers analyze the specific situation rationally. First of all, they consider their situation, family situation, national policies, and expectations from land transfer, which becomes an essential theoretical basis for farmers to decide whether to transfer their land. The current land system in China is that farmers enjoy the right to contract and manage the land while the state controls the land ownership. When farmers transfer land, what they transfer is their right to manage the land. Therefore, to optimize the allocation of rural land resources and realize large-scale management, we have to rely on land transfer to clarify land property rights to conform to the development of the current productive forces and achieve the rural management system's benign development.

Therefore, based on the above references and the current status of farmers' land transfer in Tangshan, the factors affecting farmers' intention to transfer their land are divided into nine explanatory variables in three categories: farmers' characteristics, family characteristics, and extrinsic characteristic factors.

EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

The results of the binary logistic regression analysis of the sample data using SPSS22.0 are shown in Table 5. The binary logistic regression analysis results of the sample data using SPSS22.0 software are shown in Table 5. From the estimated structure of the model, we can conclude that the Cox&Snell R² and Nagelkerke R² of the model are relatively good, and the prediction accuracy is as high as 83.3%, which indicates that the model fits well. In addition, the sig of the model fit goodness of fit test (HL Tests) is 0.673, which is greater than the significance level of 0.1, indicating that the model fit results are in good agreement with the data. In conclusion, the proposed regression model is effective.

From Table 4, it can be seen that in terms of farmers' personal characteristics, gender does not have a statistically significant effect on land transfer intention. However, it can be seen through the coefficients that males are more motivated to participate in land transfer compared to females, as the land transfer intention of male farmers was 1.545 times higher than that of females. Meanwhile, age does not have a statistically significant effect on land transfer intention. As farmers grow older, their intention to transfer out their land decreases. The probability of transferring land for an increase of one year in farmers' age was only 97.7% of the original, which may be because the older people are more attached to their land and pay more attention to its vitality and security function. Farmers' education level had a significant impact on their land transfer intention. In the model, most of the regression coefficients of this variable were negative, indicating that the more educated farmers were, the weaker their land transfer intention was.

In terms of farmers' family characteristics, total household income significantly affects farmers' intention to transfer their land. The lower the income of farmers, the stronger farmers' intention to transfer their land. Farmers with low household income are more willing to transfer their land to get out of poverty and work outside to earn more from non-farm jobs. The number of farm machinery did not significantly affect farmers' land transfer, and the higher the number of farm machinery in the household, the more farmers depend on the land for agricultural production. In contrast, the number of farmers' labor forces passed the 5% significance test. The greater the number of laborers, the greater the farmers' intention to engage in land transfer, indicating that the probability of farmers engaging in the land transfer is 3.526 times greater than the original for an additional agricultural laborer in the household.

In terms of extrinsic characteristics affecting farmers' land transfer, the analysis results show that farmers' knowledge of land policy has a significant effect on transfer intention, while national policy affects individual choices to some extent. Farmers are willing to transfer-out their land in case of high expected benefits from such land. Farmers' expectation of the lease term of the land to be transferred passed the 5% significance test, indicating that the longer the land transfer, the weaker farmers' intention of land transfer. Concerned about the guarantee of their land rights, they feared that their land rights could not be secured if they transferred out their land for too long. It also reflects the importance of enhancing land transfer security.

CONCLUSIONS

As the core of the issues relating to agriculture, rural areas, and rural people, the land transfer is objectively required to realize the development of agriculture and rural economy, and it is also an essential agricultural policy of the state. Through the empirical analysis of the factors affecting farmers' intention to transfer their land in Tangshan City, China, it concluded that farmers' intention to transfer their land was affected by both farmers' personal factors and external environmental factors under specific social and economic conditions. Given this, the following policy recommendations may be proposed based on the conclusion.

First, the social security system of farmers should be further improved. According to the research results, the older the farmers are, the weaker their intention to participate in rural land transfer, indicating that farmers attach particular importance to the function of land in securing their lives. Therefore, we should further increase the financial investment in rural social security to further expand the scope of pension security in rural areas and reduce land dependence.

Second, a sound market for rural land transfer should be improved. The research results show that the higher the rent and the shorter the term of land transfer, the stronger farmers' transfer intention. It indicates that some farmers in Tangshan City have insufficient knowledge about rural land transfer information and have a strong subjective will. Restricted by the relatively economic underdevelopment in rural areas, and the lack of Internet facilities and trading platforms, information asymmetry arises between the supply and demand of land. This hinders farmers from transforming their intention to transfer their land to practical acts. In this context, one of the keys to accelerate rural land transfer in Tangshan is to cultivate a perfect market for agricultural land transfer, to classify and grade agricultural land according to specific principles, and to evaluate the price of agricultural land objectively. In addition, we should establish an information system for the supply and demand of agricultural land and release the latest information in a timely manner, so as to match the information between the supply and demand of land transfer, and promote the rent and lease term of land to be transferred to meet farmers' needs.

Third, we should deepen the promotion and explanation of land-related policies. Through the previous analysis of farmers' knowledge of land policies, it can be seen that farmers have some ambiguities and misunderstandings of land-related policies, which affects the smooth implementation of land transfer. The subjective reason is that many farmers are poorly educated. The objective reason is that the governments need to enhance their land policies' publicity further to make the policies known more thoroughly by more farmers. Land transfer conducted when farmers do not have a detailed understanding of land policies is likely to cause disputes and subsequent difficulties, which is not conducive to the long-term and stable development of land transfer. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the promotion and explanation of land policies so that farmers can learn more about land policies.

적 요

이 연구의 목적은 각각의 요인들이 농업인의 토지 유통 의 도에 어떤 영향을 미치는지 알아보기 위함임. 본 논문은 중국 탕산시 농민의 토지 유통 의향조사자료를 토대로 로지스틱스 회귀 모형을 활용해 농민의 토지 유통 영향을 미치는 요인을 분석하였음. 그 결과 농민의 교육수준, 총가족소득, 노동력, 토 지정책 이해도가 토지유통에 큰 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타남. 그러므로, 우리는 탕산의 농촌 토지 유통을 활성화하고, 농지 사용의 효율성을 증진시키기 위해서 사회보장제도를 개선하고, 농촌의 토지 유통 시장을 구축하며, 토지정책을 선전해야 함.

Figure

Table

Table 1.

The influencing factor variables of transference willingness.

Table 2.

Summary statistics on characteristics of survey participants.

Table 3.

Variable and definition.

Table 4.

Regression results.

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