IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v13y2024i4p413-d1362687.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Land Tenure, Loans, and Farmers’ Cropland Conservation Behavior: Evidence from Rural Northwest China

Author

Listed:
  • Guoren Long

    (Institute of Central Asia, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, China)

  • Xiaoyan Zhou

    (Northwest Institute of Historical Environment and Socio-Economic Development, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, China)

  • Jun Li

    (Northwest Institute of Historical Environment and Socio-Economic Development, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, China)

Abstract

The pivotal role of farmers’ cropland conservation behavior (CCB) in advancing green agricultural practices is well-recognized. This paper underscores the critical role of stable land tenure in enhancing farmers’ CCB, exemplified by the practice of mulch recycling. Drawing on a survey of 349 cotton farmers in Xinjiang, Northwest China, it offers a systematic examination of how land tenure stability influences CCB and its underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal a significant positive correlation between land tenure stability and CCB. Notably, this relationship is mediated by the facilitation of land mortgages, wherein written contracts and extended land tenure durations enhance farmers’ participation in land mortgages, thereby bolstering CCB. Furthermore, the stabilizing effect of land tenure on CCB also mitigates the negative impacts of risk aversion and time preference. The study additionally highlights the differential effects of land tenure stability based on farm size and technical training; its facilitative role in CCB is more pronounced among larger-scale farmers and those engaged in technical training.

Suggested Citation

  • Guoren Long & Xiaoyan Zhou & Jun Li, 2024. "Land Tenure, Loans, and Farmers’ Cropland Conservation Behavior: Evidence from Rural Northwest China," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-20, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:13:y:2024:i:4:p:413-:d:1362687
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/13/4/413/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/13/4/413/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abdul-Rahaman, Awal & Abdulai, Awudu, 2018. "Do farmer groups impact on farm yield and efficiency of smallholder farmers? Evidence from rice farmers in northern Ghana," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 95-105.
    2. Meredith J. Soule & Abebayehu Tegene & Keith D. Wiebe, 2000. "Land Tenure and the Adoption of Conservation Practices," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 82(4), pages 993-1005.
    3. Mohammad Ismet & Andrew P. Barkley & Richard V. Llewelyn, 1998. "Government intervention and market integration in Indonesian rice markets," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 19(3), pages 283-295, December.
    4. Gebremedhin, Berhanu & Swinton, Scott M., 2003. "Investment in soil conservation in northern Ethiopia: the role of land tenure security and public programs," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 69-84, July.
    5. Hanan G. Jacoby & Guo Li & Scott Rozelle, 2002. "Hazards of Expropriation: Tenure Insecurity and Investment in Rural China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1420-1447, December.
    6. Thanyaporn Chankrajang, 2015. "Partial Land Rights and Agricultural Outcomes: Evidence from Thailand," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 91(1), pages 126-148.
    7. Brick, Kerri & Visser, Martine, 2015. "Risk preferences, technology adoption and insurance uptake: A framed experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 383-396.
    8. Mitch Renkow, 1994. "Technology, production environment, and household income: Assessing the regional impacts of technological change," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 10(3), pages 219-231, May.
    9. Madhu Khanna, 2001. "Sequential Adoption of Site-Specific Technologies and its Implications for Nitrogen Productivity: A Double Selectivity Model," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 83(1), pages 35-51.
    10. Batz, F. -J. & Peters, K. J. & Janssen, W., 1999. "The influence of technology characteristics on the rate and speed of adoption," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 121-130, October.
    11. Abdellaoui, Mohammed & Kemel, Emmanuel & Panin, Amma & Vieider, Ferdinand M., 2019. "Measuring time and risk preferences in an integrated framework," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 459-469.
    12. Klaus Deininger & Daniel Ayalew Ali & Tekie Alemu, 2011. "Impacts of Land Certification on Tenure Security, Investment, and Land Market Participation: Evidence from Ethiopia," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 87(2), pages 312-334.
    13. Manu Goyal & Serguei Netessine, 2007. "Strategic Technology Choice and Capacity Investment Under Demand Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(2), pages 192-207, February.
    14. F.‐J. Batz & K.J. Peters & W. Janssen, 1999. "The influence of technology characteristics on the rate and speed of adoption," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 21(2), pages 121-130, October.
    15. Fisman, Raymond & Svensson, Jakob, 2007. "Are corruption and taxation really harmful to growth? Firm level evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 63-75, May.
    16. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-529, October.
    17. Zhen, Lin & Cao, Shuyan & Cheng, Shengkui & Xie, Gaodi & Wei, Yunjie & Liu, Xuelin & Li, Fen, 2010. "Arable land requirements based on food consumption patterns: Case study in rural Guyuan District, Western China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 1443-1453, May.
    18. Barzel,Yoram, 1997. "Economic Analysis of Property Rights," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521597135, February.
    19. Abdulai, Awudu & Owusu, Victor & Goetz, Renan, 2011. "Land tenure differences and investment in land improvement measures: Theoretical and empirical analyses," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 66-78, September.
    20. Ren, Guangcheng & Zhu, Xueqin & Heerink, Nico & Feng, Shuyi, 2020. "Rural household migration in China – the roles of actual and perceived tenure security," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    21. Besley, Timothy, 1995. "Property Rights and Investment Incentives: Theory and Evidence from Ghana," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(5), pages 903-937, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kotchikpa Gabriel Lawin & Lota Tamini, 2018. "Droits de propriété foncière et performance des petits producteurs agricoles des pays en développement : une synthèse de la littérature empirique," CIRANO Working Papers 2018s-05, CIRANO.
    2. Hagos, Hosaena Ghebru, 2012. "Tenure (in)security and agricultural investment of smallholder farmers in Mozambique:," MSSP working papers 5, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    3. Cao, Yueming & Bai, Yunli & Zhang, Linxiu, 2020. "The impact of farmland property rights security on the farmland investment in rural China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    4. Reshmi Kumari & Yuko Nakano, 2016. "Does land lease tenure insecurity cause decreased productivity and investment in the sugar industry? Evidence from Fiji," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 60(3), pages 406-421, July.
    5. Hui Mao & Yujia Chai & Shaojian Chen, 2021. "Land Tenure and Green Production Behavior: Empirical Analysis Based on Fertilizer Use by Cotton Farmers in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(9), pages 1-18, April.
    6. Si, Ruishi & Lu, Qian & Aziz, Noshaba, 2021. "Does the stability of farmland rental contract & conservation tillage adoption improve family welfare? Empirical insights from Zhangye, China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    7. Lei Xu & Shixiang Chen & Shuliu Tian, 2022. "The Mechanism of Land Registration Program on Land Transfer in Rural China: Considering the Effects of Livelihood Security and Agricultural Management Incentives," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-25, August.
    8. Bo Li & Ruimei Wang & Quan Lu, 2021. "Land Tenure and Cotton Farmers’ Land Improvement: Evidence from State-Owned Farms in Xinjiang, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-20, December.
    9. Salvatore Di Falco & Jérémy Laurent‐Lucchetti & Marcella Veronesi & Gunnar Kohlin, 2020. "Property Rights, Land Disputes and Water Scarcity: Empirical Evidence from Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(1), pages 54-71, January.
    10. Wang, Hui & Riedinger, Jeffrey & Jin, Songqing, 2015. "Land documents, tenure security and land rental development: Panel evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 220-235.
    11. Thomas Vendryes, 2014. "Peasants Against Private Property Rights: A Review Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 971-995, December.
    12. Ali, Daniel Ayalew & Deininger, Klaus & Goldstein, Markus, 2014. "Environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in Africa: Pilot evidence from Rwanda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 262-275.
    13. Jérémie GIGNOUX & Karen MACOURS & Liam WREN-LEWIS, 2015. "Impact of land administration programs on agricultural productivity and rural development: existing evidence, challenges and new approaches," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 96(3), pages 467-498.
    14. Ghebru, Hosaena, 2015. "Is There a Merit to the Continuum Tenure Approach? A Case of Demand for Land Rights Formulation in Rural Mozambique," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211683, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    15. Vranken, Liesbet & Macours, Karen & Noev, Nivelin & Swinnen, Johan F.M., 2007. "Property Rights Imperfections, Asset Allocation, and Welfare: Co-Ownership in Bulgaria," 104th Seminar, September 5-8, 2007, Budapest, Hungary 7795, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    16. Li, Bowei & Shen, Yueqin, 2021. "Effects of land transfer quality on the application of organic fertilizer by large-scale farmers in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    17. Tobi Kossigan & Edgeweblime Kcodgoh, 2022. "Effect of land tenure security on the adaptation strategies of farm households to climate change in Togo [Effet de la sécurité foncière sur les stratégies d'adaptation des ménages agricoles au chan," Post-Print hal-04031537, HAL.
    18. Ghebru, Hosaena & Holden, Stein T., 2015. "Technical Efficiency and Productivity Differential Effects of Land Right Certification: A Quasi-Experimental Evidence," Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Humboldt-Universitaat zu Berlin, vol. 54(1), pages 1-31, February.
    19. Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing, 2006. "Tenure security and land-related investment: Evidence from Ethiopia," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 1245-1277, July.
    20. Ayalew, Hailemariam & Admasu, Yeshwas & Chamberlin, Jordan, 2021. "Is land certification pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:13:y:2024:i:4:p:413-:d:1362687. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.