Trust evolution, institutional constraints, and land trusteeship decisions among Chinese farmers

Abstract

Land trusteeship involves farmers entrusting the farming and managing of their land to trustees, who manage the land on their behalf in exchange for a commission fee. Land trusteeship has been an important approach to bridging the gap between smallholder farmers and modern agriculture in China. Because of the information asymmetry in land trusteeship, farmers have higher uncertainty and perceived risk, so social trust and institutional constraints are particularly important in promoting farmers' participation in trusteeship. The objective of this study was to examine the impact of trust evolution and institutional constraints on smallholder farmers' decision-making in green prevention and pest control trusteeship. Our research was conducted in Shandong, China, utilising factor analysis and binary regression. The results revealed that trusteeship decision-making combines trust governance and institutional governance, with significant roles played by institutional trust, institutional supervision, institutional regulation, and interpersonal trust. As part-time farming became more prevalent, the importance of institutional trust and institutional supervision increased, indicating a shift in trusteeship governance from social relations to institutional contracts and the maturation of land trusteeship models. In addition, we also tested the interaction effect of social trust and institutional constraints and the heterogeneity effect of different trusteeship contracts. To improve the land trust system, we must enhance farmers' institutional trust and leverage the active role of intermediary supervision organisations such as village collectives.

Social Network Analysis of Farmers after the Private Cooperatives’ “Intervention” in a Rural Area of China—A Case Study of the XiangX Cooperative in Shandong Province

“…However, because the private-owned cooperatives are profit-driven, it is uncertain if the smallholders are "pushed out" of the social network. Moreover, because smallholders will separate from agricultural production after farmland trusteeship, whether smallholders become isolated in rural social networks is full of uncertainty [32]. In addition, because villages have played important roles in organizing rural smallholders for a long time in China [33,34], whether private-owned cooperatives can perform better than an administrative village when organizing smallholders' social networks is a matter of concern.…”