Does the Collective Forestland Tenure Reform Promote Rural Households’ Forestry Inputs? Based on Dual Perspectives of Rural Households’ Divergence and Inter-Generational Differences

Abstract

As the most direct subject of collective forestland tenure reform, rural households’ forestry production behavior is an important guarantee for the promotion of sustainable forestry development. Based on the survey data of 12,760 rural households in 9 provinces in China, we construct a theoretical analysis framework of the impact of collective forestland tenure reform on rural households’ forestry inputs from the perspective of rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences, and elucidate the mechanism of the effect of collective forestland tenure reform on rural households’ forestry inputs in the context of rural household differentiation and inter-generational differences. The results of the empirical analysis show that collective forestland tenure reform significantly increases rural households’ forestry inputs; this effect has a differentiated impact on rural households with different degrees of differentiation and inter-generational differences. Although the collective forestland tenure reform provides a good institutional environment for households to increase the enthusiasm of forestry inputs, the positive incentive effect of collective forestland tenure reform tends to decline as the degree of households’ differentiation and inter-generational differences deepen. Therefore, this research tries to provide an “indirect” policy adjustment idea to deepen the policies related to collective forestland tenure reform by starting from the differentiation of households and inter-generational differences.

The Impact of Collective Forest Tenure Reform on Timber Production in China: An Empirical Analysis Based on Provincial Panel Data

“…With the deepening of China's market-oriented reforms, the timber market mechanism in China has gradually improved. In 1993, China deregulated timber trading, establishing a market mechanism for timber trading [12]. After the CFTR, farming households gained more stable tenure to forest land and timber revenue, and the government further relaxed conditions for commercial forest logging, reducing related taxes and management fees [37].…”

“…Lin et al (2020), based on empirical research using household data from 18 counties in China, indicated that the CFTR positively impacted forestry management investment [10]. On the other hand, some scholars, using empirical research from household surveys, have shown that the CFTR can increase households' input of production factors in the short term, but this effect gradually weakens over time [11,12]. Xie et al (2016), using instrumental variable methods to control for factors other than the CFTR, examined the impact of the CFTR on afforestation, finding that the CFTR significantly increased the afforestation area by 7.68% in the same year, but the effect disappeared in subsequent years [13].…”