Abstract
Reasonably promoting the off-farm employment of rural surplus labor in China’s collective forest areas is an important way to increase forest resources and increase farmers’ income. China’s new round of collective forest tenure reform (CFTR) aims to optimize forest area labor allocation by strengthening forestland property rights. Therefore, in different village off-farm environments, it is necessary to explore how forestland property rights affect off-farm employment in forest areas. Based on survey data from 742 households in Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, this paper examines this effect using the double-hurdle model. The results indicate that forestland transfer rights promote decision-making about, and the supply of, off-farm labor, while forest harvesting rights significantly increase the supply of off-farm labor. The villages’ off-farm income ratio also affected the supply of off-farm labor. Moreover, under the regulation of the village off-farm income ratio, the positive incentives of forestland transfer rights on decision-making about, and the supply of, off-farm labor gradually weakened, but the incentive effect of forest harvesting rights on the supply of off-farm labor gradually increased. It is proposed that the CFTR should be further promoted, the forestland circulation mechanism and regulating forest harvest quota system should be improved, and implementation of forestry property mortgages should be strengthened.
Highlights
Accompanying industrialization and urbanization, labor from rural areas has shifted rapidly to the non-agricultural sector, greatly contributing to the development of the economy and society in China [1,2,3]
Based on an investigation of household data from the collective forest area of Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, this paper aims to analyze the impact of both forestland property rights and village off-farm environment on off-farm employment in forest areas and explain how forestland property rights affect rural labor off-farm activity participation, as well as the extent of off-farm labor supply
The results showed the likelihood ratio to be 122.71 and the p-value as 0.0000, which indicate that the double-hurdle model is more suitable than the Tobit model for estimating the influence of forestland property rights on off-farm employment
Summary
Accompanying industrialization and urbanization, labor from rural areas has shifted rapidly to the non-agricultural sector, greatly contributing to the development of the economy and society in China [1,2,3]. The collective forest area constitutes a relatively concentrated resource distribution center in China which plays an important role in both economic and social development, as well as ecological construction. The number of rural, non-agricultural laborers in Jiangxi Province totaled 8.9 million in 2018, accounting for 43.8% of the total rural population in the province [10]. As regards collective forest areas, the off-farm employment of rural labor directly impacts farmers’ growth in income, and has an effect on the increase in forest area resources through the way farmers manage the forest, which is of great significance to the sustainable development of the forest area. An urgent investigation of the theories and empirical propositions about how forestland property rights have affected the off-farm employment following the collective forest tenure reform, and what role the village off-farm environment plays, is required
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