Empirical research on farm households' attitude and behaviour for cultivated land transferring and it's influencing factors in China

Cultivated land transfer is an important way to deal with the conflict between the cultivated land fragmentation of landholders and the large-scale agricultural modernization in China. The farm households, as the direct user of cultivated land, play a key role in the cultivated land transfer. For this paper, a survey of 1 396 farm households in 74 villages, 64 townships, 42 counties in Jiangxi, the traditional agricultural province, was conducted. Using this information, a logistic regression model was employed and the attitudes of those farm households were analyzed using the family characteristics, the household economic factors and the resource endowments. The results showed that there is a little incentive for the cultivated land transfer and no macro-environment exists for the cultivated land transfer market because of the low economic benefits. Farm households which moved out to urban areas for employment play the most important role in the cultivated land transfer and become the largest force to drive the cultivated land transfer out. Family income also affects the cultivated land transfer; the income of farm households transferring cultivated land in is much lower than those of the cultivated land transferring out. In addition, the topographic characteristic of cultivated land is also an important factor influencing the cultivated land transfer; it is easier to transfer land out if the terrain is flat, but it is more difficult if the land is fragmented.