Decision-making mechanism of farmers’ homestead exit based on the TAM-TPB framework

Abstract

Guiding rural households to orderly withdraw from homestead is an important way to solve the problem of extensive utilization of rural construction land. This study constructed a decision model for farmers'homestead exit based on the technology acceptance model-theory of planned behavior (TAM-TPB) framework, and analyzed the decision-making process of farmers, influencing factors, and their differences in regions with different levels of economic development. This article also discussed the impact of human-land relationship on farmers'decision making. The results show that: (1) Farmers'willingness to exit homestead is mainly affected by three factors behavior attitude, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use. Behavior attitude is the factor that directly influenced farmers'willingness in three regions, and the effect is strongest in less developed and under-developed regions. (2) Perceived usefulness has a positive impact on farmers'willingness in three regions through direct influence and indirect influence mediated by behavior attitude, and the effect is strongest in economically developed regions. (3) Perceived ease of use, with behavior attitude and perceived usefulness as mediating variables, has an indirect positive impact on farmers'willingness, but the effect is weak in all regions. (4) The difference in human-land relationship led to farmers in developed region rejecting the exchange of homestead for urban resettlement housing; farmers in less developed region are more inclined to accept resettlement housing in the original villages to continue to live there, and farmers in underdeveloped region accept the compensation method of"house for house" . Based on these, we should place greater emphasis on farmer education, prioritizing local resettlements, and improving the flexibility of compensation methods to further improve the policy of homestead exit.

Farmers’ Livelihood, Risk Expectations, and Homestead Withdrawal Policy: Evidence on Jinjiang Pilot of China

“…Some researchers have also investigated issues related to farmers' livelihood capital, including cultivated land transfer (Huang et al, 2017;Kumar et al, 2021;Yang et al, 2021), livelihood vulnerability (Baffoe & Matsuda, 2018), resettlement and relocation (Liu et al, 2020), or the perspective of sustainable development (You & Zhang, 2017;Deng et al, 2020). Other researchers have explored livelihood strategies from different village types (Xu et al, 2019), ethnic minorities (Mao et al, 2020), small-scale farmers , or earthquake-affected areas (Zhou et al, 2021). Kuang et al (2020) studied the impact of farmers' livelihood assets on their livelihood risks and adaptation strategies.…”

“…Alternatively, risk expectations impact the psychological perception of farmers facing changes in external conditions. Some researchers explored the impact of farmers' risk expectations, perceived value, and subjective norms on HW (Sun et al, 2019;Zhou et al, 2021;Li & Zhang, 2019).…”