Forestland Reform in China: What do the Farmers Want? A Choice Experiment on Farmers’ Property Rights Preferences

Pin Qin (), Fredrik Carlsson () and Jintao Xu ()
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Pin Qin: College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Postal: 100871, Beijing, China
Jintao Xu: College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Postal: 100871, Beijing, China

No 370, Working Papers in Economics from Göteborg University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Various decentralization experiments are currently underway in the Chinese forestry sector. However, a key question often ignored by researchers and policy makers is what farmers really want from reform. This paper addresses this question using a survey-based choice experiment. We investigated farmers’ preferences for various property-rights attributes of a forestland contract. We found that farmers are highly concerned with what types of rights a contract provides. Reducing perceived risks of contract termination and introducing a priority right in the renewal of an old contract significantly increase farmers’ marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for a forest contract. An extended waiting time for rights to harvest the forest reduces a farmer’s perceived value of a contract. Farmers are also concerned with the tenure length. In one region, the annual willingenss to pay for a 50-year contract is even higher than the annual willingness to pay for 25-year contract.

Keywords: China; Choice experiment; Forest; MWTP; Property rights (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 Q15 Q23 Q50 Q51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dcm, nep-dev, nep-env and nep-tra
Date: 2009-06-30

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