The Influencing Factors of the Imbalance of Rural Long Tail Public Services

This chapter examines the factors that influence the imbalance of rural long tail public services. The imbalance of rural long tail public services is caused by a series of complex factors, including many aspects of economy, society, culture and the institutional environment, with multi-subjectivity and dimensions. This chapter first describes the imbalance from both sides of supply and demand. Then, according to the different fields of rural long tail public services, empirical research is conducted from the perspectives of rural special education, special health, elderly care and finance. With regard to the demand side factors, the overall reason for the imbalance of rural long tail public service is that rural residents’ public demand is irrational, discrete, fragmented and atomized. The irrationality of rural residents’ long tail demand refers to the irrationality based on personal preferences and cognition when choosing the required public services. In particular, there is often an irrational side in the selection of the types of public services with information cost and human capital requirements. The indifference utility curve of farmers in terms of public service demand always tends to be extended, without considering the decision-making cost. The decision is related to the non-economic factors existing in the demand selection, which means the over-marginal cost expenditure of the supply curve is unable to measure the total cost, and this makes the demand cost deviate from the expected income. Of course, the irrational demand is related to the rational factors behind that demand, such as the decentralized management mode of farmers, as well as social system obstacles (such as the household registration system) in the marketization process. With regard to the factors that affect the supply side of rural long tail public services, this section intends to analyze the supply reasons and influencing factors of the imbalance from the following perspectives: government financial constraints, government rational choice deviation, immature NGOs, and the lack of a supply “market”. After summarizing the overall reasons for the imbalance in this section, the next three sections will show the results of an empirical regression analysis of specific rural long tail public services, including special education, special health, special elderly care, and special finance. Field-based reasoning and deduction will also be conducted with regard to the above-mentioned influencing factors.