Market participation and subjective well-being of maize farmers

Abstract

This study explores how maize farmers’ market participation influences their subjective well-being, utilizing the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey data collected by the Chinese Academy of Social Science. Three variables, including market participation (a binary variable), sales ratio (a continuous variable), and sales frequency (a categorical variable), are utilized to measure maize farmers’ market participation patterns comprehensively By estimating a conditional mixed process model, this study finds that maize farmers’ market participation significantly improves their subjective well-being captured by happiness, life satisfaction, and confidence about the future by 0.672, 0.925, and 1.125 points, respectively. Maize income mediates the positive association between farmers’ market participation and their subjective well-being. The disaggregated analyses reveal that farmers at the household income tertiles 2 and 3 obtain a higher level of happiness, life satisfaction, and confidence about the future. Meanwhile, market participation significantly improves life satisfaction and confidence about the future of farmers experiencing natural disasters, while it increases the happiness of farmers who do not have such experiences. Farmers’ market participation significantly improves their objective well-being regarding pork consumption and milk consumption by 68 g/capita/day and 56 g/capita/day, respectively. Further analysis confirms that market participation intensity, reflected by sales ratio and frequency, significantly increases farmers’ subjective well-being. These findings highlight that the government should devote more efforts to inciting maize farmers to participate in market transactions to increase farmers’ incomes and subjective well-being.