Abstract:

Promoting the withdrawal of rural homesteads is an important measure to alleviate the inefficient allocation of land resources in China. The core of this policy is to understand farmers’ compensation preferences, design a reasonable compensation plan, and promote farmers to voluntarily withdraw from their homesteads. This study designed experimental plan scenarios including six attributes compensation method, compensation delivery speed, compensation ratio, payment mode, supporting services, and funding sources. Based on the survey data, we focused on comparing farming household choice preferences and sources of heterogeneity under the three compensation methods of monetary compensation, housing replacement, and employment. The results show that: (1) As long as the policies are open and transparent and the compensation standards are reasonable, most farmers show the willingness to participate in the withdrawal of homesteads and tend to choose direct monetary compensation; (2) Non-monetary compensation also shows certain policy potentials. Groups of people who are younger, more educated, have higher income levels, and have homesteads farther from county seats and less important are more attracted by non-monetary compensation plans; (3) Education and income levels are the two important factors that affect what supporting services and source of funds farmers choose. The lower the level of education and annual income of the farmers, the more they prefer education and training and paying social security contribution retrospectively, and they are more inclined to choose the source of compensation funds through the financial appropriation channel. The findings of this study have policy implications for formulating residential land withdrawal compensation plans more scientifically and accurately.

Key words: homestead withdrawal, compensation plan, policy preference, heterogeneity, choice experiment method