Farmers' identity, property rights cognition and perception of rural residential land distributive justice in China: Findings from Nanjing, Jiangsu Province

Urban–Rural Construction Land Replacement for More Sustainable Land Use and Regional Development in China: Policies and Practices

“…The resident population in rural areas and agricultural household registration population have experienced a rapid decrease between 1996 and 2001, but rural residential land continues to expand significantly [15][16][17]. One reason is that some farmers work and live in cities for a long time but still keep their old rural houses undemolished, which results in them occupying residential land both in urban and rural areas [18,19]. Furthermore, farmers' preference for building their houses in villages close to roads and other infrastructure has contributed to the loss of agricultural land [20][21][22].…”

Does cognition matter? Applying the push‐pull‐mooring model to Chinese farmers' willingness to withdraw from rural homesteads

“…Before moving to our PPM model, why farmer's willingness plays a key role in the withdrawal process must be clarified based on two aspects: First, rural homesteads provide a guarantee of farmers' residences, courtyard agricultural operations and low‐cost lifestyles (Jiang, He, Qu, Zhang, & Meng, ), and these fundamental functions indicate that policy‐makers should take farmers' willingness into account. Some studies find that if governments fail to consider farmers' views, the resulting resentment hinders local long‐term socioeconomic development (Li et al, ; Wang et al, ). As such, in 2017, the Chinese Central Committee meeting emphasized that rural homestead reform should not go against farmers' inclinations.…”

“…As stated in the Introduction, the special function that farmers' cognition has on homestead rights and policy acquisition in our case entails a unique meaning for cognition, which indicates that it is one of the mooring factors in the PPM model. A previous study indicated that “taking rural residential land as a special property into consideration, farmers' property rights cognition should also be examined” (Wang et al, , p. 100). In addition (and perhaps more interestingly), comparative research has found that the process of rural–urban migration draws more cognitively able women to cities in China but not in India (Weir, Lay, & Langa, ).…”

“…We argue that because rural homesteads are owned by collective economic organizations and serve as the last safety net for survival by the majority of farmers with the Chinese bifurcated social security system (Long et al, ; Wang, ), it is reasonable to fully understand the reasons why farmer's willingness represents a key factor in the whole withdrawal process. As Wang, Chen, and Long () observed, it is hard for farmers to understand the legal regulations regarding rural residential land property rights. As such, farmer's willingness and farmers' level of policy awareness should be acknowledged and investigated.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper in which PPM is employed to investigate farmers' willingness to WRH in China. In particular, a proposed conceptual framework will be established here and the PLS‐SEM model will be used to identify certain factors, such as cognition, that have received little attention at the individual level (Wang et al, ). The survey data analysed is from the town of Jiaze in Wujin, the only pilot district selected for nationwide rural homestead system reform in Jiangsu Province.…”