Effect of Policy Cognition on the Intention of Villagers’ Withdrawal from Rural Homesteads

Abstract

The Chinese government encourages villagers to withdraw from rural homesteads and puts these homesteads into the land market to revitalize rural homestead resources and make up for the lack of new construction land. Unfortunately, the implementation of the withdrawal from rural homesteads (WRH) policy remains slow. To realize the effective promotion of WRH policy, exploring the impact of policy cognition (PC) on villagers’ WRH intentions has become the key to solving the above problems. Thus, field survey data on 280 villagers in 13 administrative villages in the Yangling Demonstration district of Shaanxi province were collected through a face-to-face household survey. In addition, combined with the extended theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study used the structural equation model (SEM) to empirically analyze the influence of PC on the intentions of villagers’ WRH. Our empirical results indicated that benefit cognition and difficulty cognition were the focus of the villagers and had positive and negative effects on the intention of WRH, respectively. Government behavior also played a positive role in villagers’ WRH intentions. Villagers would consider compensation standards, pay closer attention to improving the living environment and employment opportunities, and express individual intentions. We believe policymakers should systematically consider the various impacts of WRH policy on villagers and build the villagers’ participation system of WRH and cross-regional transaction system for WRH indicators. This paper further enriches the conceptual framework of PC, which may help us better understand villagers’ responses to relevant policy reforms.

Effects of Livelihood Capital on the Farmers’ Behavioral Intention of Rural Residential Land Development Right Transfer: Evidence from Wujin District, Changzhou City, China

“…In addition, subjective norm to behavioral intention is also supported. The results suggest that livelihood capital can promote development right transfer through individual cognition, which is consistent with the effects of attitude to behavior, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norm on behavioral intention in most studies under TPB framework [7,46].…”

“…Similar studies have explored the factors that affect farmers' willingness of withdrawal from rural homesteads and rural homestead transfer [7,8]. It was found that both the internal factors and the external environment effect their behavioral intention.…”

“…Finally, the effects of individual resource endowment factors and psychological factors on behavioral intention as well as the paths is examined, which enriched the application of TPB theory and improved the explanatory power of the theoretical model. Furthermore, this study focuses on land development right transfer rather than only on withdrawal from rural homesteads or rural residential land circulation, which is distinguished from other research [7,12].…”

“…In practice, there are deviations between the expected system goals Land 2023, 12, 1207 2 of 16 and practical implementations while farmers have little incentive to join in the LDRT, due to the homestead possibly being observed as the carrier of hometown emotional attachment and economic security [5,6]. In some areas, only 7.9% of farmers withdrew from their homesteads based on field survey data [7]. Therefore, the study of the behavioral intention of LDRT in this paper is of great significance to the optimal use of the rural homesteads resource and reducing potential living risks.…”

“…Furthermore, the research on homestead withdrawal focuses on the farmers' intention and influencing factors, and current voluntary and compensation instruments of rural homestead withdrawal. Resource endowment [10], generation differences [11], and individual cognition [7,12] were observed as internal determinants of homestead withdrawal intention [13][14][15], while village committees [16], formal and informal institutions [17], social security system [5,18], external environment differences [2], and homestead situation [10,19] were regarded as external factors. The majority of research involves empirical studies based on underdeveloped areas, and few studies have been undertaken in developed areas.…”