The Impact of Dialect Diversity on Rent-Free Farmland Transfers: Evidence from Chinese Rural Household Surveys

Shangpu Li, Ye Jiang, Biliang Luo () and Xiaodan Zheng
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Shangpu Li: National School of Agricultural Institution and Development, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
Ye Jiang: Department of Economics, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA 17013, USA
Biliang Luo: National School of Agricultural Institution and Development, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
Xiaodan Zheng: College of Economics and Management, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-22

Abstract: The rent-free farmland transfer that exists widely in China’s rural areas is a topic worthy of attention. Particularly, the regional heterogeneity of its occurrences implies regional cultural heterogeneities. Using local dialects to proxy regional cultural features, this study applies econometric methods to examine the impacts of dialect diversity on rent-free farmland transfers. It also considers possible mechanisms through a mediation analysis, based on a combined two-year rural household survey dataset from the Guangdong and Jiangxi Provinces in 2015 and 2016. Robust estimation results reveal that dialect diversity increases the probability of rent-free farmland transfers at the household and village levels. According to the mediation analysis, dialect diversity influences villages’ farmland abandonment, rural farmland market development, and the flexibility of farmland transfer contracts, which further affects rent-free farmland transfer. Rent-free farmland transfer depends on social trust and contracts’ self-fulfilling advantages. Therefore, cultural and traditional factors should be taken into consideration, which would form beneficial interactions between the selections of rural farmland institutional arrangement and land rights policy implementations.

Keywords: rural household; farmland transfer; rent free; dialect diversity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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