Analysis of influencing factors of farmers' participation behavior in different rural residential land consolidation stages

Abstract: To promote farmers' participation in rural residential land consolidation, the research of discussing the mechanism of farmers' participation in rural residential land consolidation and identifying the factors affecting farmers' participation behavior should be carried out urgently. Specific mechanisms of some influence factors causingfarmers' different participation behaviors couldn't be explained well, when farmers' different participation behaviors in different consolidation stages were considered as an entire party. Therefore, based on rural residential land consolidation stages, farmers' participation behaviors were divided into 4 types in this paper: general participation, decision-making participation, construction participation and late management and protection participation. The questionnaire was designed to investigate farmerbasic information, farmers'different participation behaviors, and the environment of the villages. Toguarantee the representativeness of the sample, 3-4 resettlement areas,in which land consolidation had been completed, were chosen in every district/county. The total number of valid farmer questionnaires was 531 from2 cities innorth and south Jiangsu Province,which involved 25 villages in 5 districts/counties.From June to Augustin 2016, face-to-face investigations were conducted with farmers by random sampling. Based on the micro-survey data, binary logistic regression models by Stata12 were used to explore the influence factors of farmers' different participation behaviors in different rural residential land consolidation stages. The results indicated: 1) Farmers' cognition of consolidation content, health condition, government support and local economic level had significant impacts on farmers' general participation,while the factors like gender, education years, cognition of participation ability and social identity,which should significantlyaffect farmers' participation behaviors theoretically, exerted no significant influence in the model. 2) There were significant differences between the factors that significantly affected farmers' participation in different rural residential land consolidation stages. And factors such as gender, social identity and social relation network had significant effects on farmers' particular participationbehavior, but the effects were counteracted at general participation level. It was the reason why they had no significant effect on farmers' general participation behavior.This findingfully demonstrated the necessity of analyzing farmers' participation in different stages.3) Despite factors affectingfarmers' participation behavior in different stages differed, farmers' cognition of consolidation content,cognition of participation ability andgovernment supportinfluencedmost types of farmers' participation behaviors significantly.4) Family income and education yearshad no significant impact on any type of farmers' participation behavior.It implies that constraints brought by low family income and education level are no more the key factors that reduce farmers' participation motivation. Consciousness of rights will be the new incentive instead. And the awakening of consciousness of rights depends on the construction of the external systems and policies.According to these results, it issuggested that differential policies should be made to encourage farmers participating in the entire consolidation process. Enhancing farmers' ability to participate, improving participation process andconstructing external institutional environment should be the priorities of policy-making in the foreseeable future. This study can provide amore comprehensive and accurate guidance for promoting farmers' participation in rural residential land consolidation.